


Something in the Fog

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Cults, Dub Con (Possession), Eldritch, Friends to Lovers, Further Clairification of Dub Con Tag in the Appropriate Chapter, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Miscommunication, Old Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-18 21:36:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16525097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: Finally settling into some semblance of normalcy after Cas comes back from the Empty, Sam finds a case up in New England. In one historic town, people are losing their minds and drowning themselves in a nearby river.Sam and Dean set off alone, only to quickly call Cas to their aid when they realize that the unnerving town of Dunwich is hiding far more than your average witch or ghoul.Drawn into investigating a cult that worships a being far beyond their comprehension, Team Free Will doesn’t understand quite how much danger they are in...





	1. New England

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic for SPN Eldritch Bang, written by myself with tons of beautiful art by the absolutely wonderful [be_my_precious](https://be-my-precious.livejournal.com/). It was a great experience working with her, I'm so glad she decided to claim my fic! Please go visit her to see more of the awesome stuff she does!
> 
> For the livejournal art post, [go take a look here!](https://be-my-precious.livejournal.com/839313.html)
> 
> I would also like to thank my wonderful betas,[ athaclena ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athaclena/pseuds/athaclena)and [captainbunnicula.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kradarua)
> 
> As you can see from the tag, there is some dub-con in this fic. While this is mild and fully explained as the story goes on, I will give forewarning and optional spoilers in the authors note for the chapter, so anyone who wishes to skip over it can do so.
> 
> I have included a lot of little Lovecraft easter eggs and tropes in this fic. I got so excited when my betas spotted one here or there, so please let me know if you spot any while reading! It'll make my day!
> 
> Each of the chapters in the fic is named after one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories. While some of his work doesn't hold up well to our modern society now, they were pretty influential in shaping the horror genre and I would always recommend them, if you're into that kind of thing. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think of this little Eldritch adventure, I always answer comments and I'd love to know if you enjoyed it :)
> 
> Mal <3

 

 

 

 

**~New England~**

 

It was October.

The leaves on the trees that lined the road leading to the bunker proclaimed it loudly, clinging to their last few leaves before giving in and embracing their nudity for winter.

Dean honked Baby’s horn as he dipped off the road into the bunker’s concealed garage. The familiar smell of grease and dust welcomed him, filling his senses with home as he gathered up the groceries. The damned plastic Walmart bags had slid all over the back bench, and Sam’s stupid celery was wedged under the driver's seat.

In the process of freeing the rogue greens, Dean didn’t hear the garage door open. He almost went for a punch when Cas’s hand moved towards his, innocently gathering a couple of the grocery bags from his grip to help.

“Christ, Cas! Wear a bell!”

The angel blinked, freezing momentarily. “I came to help you with the bags,” he pointed out redundantly, “and to let you know that Sam has found a case.”

Dean passed a few more bags over to Cas, nudging Baby’s door shut with his hip before striding on into the bunker, talking back over his shoulder. “A case?”

“Up in New England,” Cas clarified quietly. “People going mad and turning up drowned.”

Dean blinked a few times, turning to face Cas once more as they made it to the kitchen.

Usually, the bunker kitchen was a welcome refuge for Dean, but his mood had soured pretty sharply when Cas mentioned the case. Even the familiar room where he provided for his makeshift family didn’t soften it.

“New England,” Dean repeated, pursing his lips. “We can’t—”

“I know,” Cas grumbled, interrupting tiredly. “We can’t leave Jack alone that long. Who knows what could happen. His powers—”

“Are dangerous,” Dean butted in, his voice flat as he began to dig through the plastic bags and shove things into cupboards.

“I was going to go with unpredictable,” Cas ventured with a sigh. “But you aren’t wrong. He just needs to learn to control them.”

Dean was silent, squeezing packages of lasagna noodles into the cupboard full of dried goods.

“I suppose you and Sam should go to New England,” Cas said quietly after a moment. “Doubtful that you’d need me anyway.”

A fully articulated response formed in Dean’s mind, clarifying for Cas exactly why he’d be needed. _Because I need you, because I miss you when you aren’t with me, because I’m not sure I trust you to stay alive_ , but it never made it out of his mouth. Instead, he thinned his lips in silence and stacked tomato soup.

  


***

 

Sam sat in the passenger seat with his laptop balanced on his thighs. Strains of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” drifted out of Baby’s speakers as the night closed in.

“We should grab a motel in the next town,” Sam commented thoughtfully. “There won’t be another for a couple hours after that.”

Dean just nodded, his eyes on the road.

Sam snapped the laptop shut. “Alright, Dean. It’s just you, me, and Baby. So are you gonna talk to me, or what?”

Green eyes slid hesitantly from the tarmac to Sam, before moving silently back.

“Really?” Sam tried again.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Sammy,” Dean sighed.

“I dunno, anything?” Sam huffed in exasperation. “You were so happy when we first got Cas back, Dean. If anything, you cheered up and I became the one who needed you. But now...you’re getting moody again. It’s not about Mom, so don’t try to tell me it is.”

Dean’s lips pressed together and his jaw tightened. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Sam blinked. A moment passed, and then he slowly nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s talk about the case. Me and you, hunting some monsters. Or potential monsters, anyway.”

The curl at the edge of Dean’s lip seemed genuine, at least. “That sounds great, Sammy. Fill me in, Kansas to Massachusetts is a long-ass drive.”

Murmuring his agreement, Sam eased the laptop open and tabbed through the series of documents he’d downloaded before they left.

“So get this, the town—Dunwich—has the dubious honor of being the poorest town in New England. Rampant unemployment, depressed populace, the works,” Sam began. “It seems like the deaths started about two months back, in the third week of August. A nineteen-year-old woman named Jett Sobs was in a local bar chatting with friends when she began to ‘twitch uncontrollably’,” Sam quoted, “before speaking in tongues and running out of the room. Her friends went after her, and by all accounts, she seemed to have spontaneously gone mad. Before the paperwork could be done to section her, she was found drowned in the Miskatonic River.”

Dean grimaced. “Lovely.”

“There have been at least fourteen other deaths matching that description, or very similar,” Sam continued. “All of them start with the sudden madness, then end with the body being found in the Miskatonic. They were all judged suicides.”

“Place must have the highest suicide rate on the East Coast,” Dean’s attention left the road long enough to roll his eyes and emit an inelegant snort.

Sam nodded, scrolling further down his notes. “The most recent one was on Wednesday. A twenty-eight-year-old woman working in the HR department of a local manufacturing plant ran out in the middle of the day. The manager claimed that Jessica 'stopped mid-interview and began beating her head on the desk, crying and yelling in an unknown language. Her interviewee fled the room and did not return. We didn't hire him.'," Sam winced. "Jesus. What's wrong with people in this town?"

“They’re nuts,” Dean offered helpfully.

“Are they though?” Sam countered, shaking his head. “Nothing about this seems normal, but I can’t come up with anything supernatural to explain it, either.”

Humming in agreement, they drove on, batting ideas back and forth over what could be causing widespread insanity and using the suicides as a way to cover its tracks. None of their ideas held water.

“Banshee?” Dean suggested.

“No one ever heard anything,” Sam countered.

Dean pondered. “Massachusetts—how far are we from Salem?”

“Good thought,” Sam approved, but then shook his head. “Ergot poisoning is usually much longer term, though. I don’t know why it would have been condensed into the last couple of months.”

Dean drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Whisper?”

“Only feeds during a solar eclipse. Leshy?”

“Not this side of the pond,” Dean shook his head. “And these people don’t sound like they were tickled to death, either.”

“True,” Sam sighed, clipping the laptop shut and twisting to place it in the back seat. “For all we know, they really did just drown themselves. Maybe it’s purely human in origin. But we need to find out.”

Dean pulled up outside the first motel with vacancies and they shuffled inside for their four hours before setting off again.

 

***

 

The motel they had slept in wasn’t too bad as far as late-night hourly’s tended to go; there were no rats, and no one had indicated that Sam was Dean’s pimp. So all in all, they’d had worse.

Dean had slept badly, just like he had most recent nights, and when he woke his mood was barely improved from the day before. He snapped at Sam about the way their duffles had been stacked ( _“Who cares Dean, they didn’t fall over.”_ ) and the amount of salt Sam had packed ( _“Yeah, because only Kansas has any salt, Dean, it’s not as if we can get some in Massachusetts or anything.”_ ) He glared at himself in the mirror while he brushed his teeth, and by the time Sam had slammed the door to go and get breakfast, he had decided to call Cas and not-talk about things again.

Dean strolled through the parking lot to where Baby awaited him, thumbing very slowly through the contacts on his phone. There were far fewer entries than there had been ten or even twenty years ago. Not many hunters made it to forty. He squinted down at the screen, his eyes finally settling on the entry saved as “Cass”. For the first time, he realized he’d accidentally typed an extra ‘s’ the last time he’d added the contact. Stalling on actually making the phone call, he took the time to correct it.

Once he was out of parking lot to traverse, he finally hit call.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas’s voice came before the second ring began. Dean often wondered if the angel had some kind of extra sense that told him when he was about to get a phone call.

“Hey, buddy. Just checking in, we’re only a couple hours out from Dunwich, at most.”

“Only two hours? You made truly excellent time,” Cas said.

The comment could have been a carefully polite way of commenting on the speed at which Dean drove, but he let it go.

“So how’s the kid doing?” Dean asked conversationally as he leaned against the Impala's door, waiting for Sam to fetch their coffee.

“Well, I suppose,” Cas rumbled gently through the phone. “He seems to pick things up incredibly fast, though he’s no closer to being able to control his outbursts. They mostly seem to be emotional.”

Dean made a non-committal noise.

“How are you doing, Dean?”  Cas’s voice was low, slightly softer.

The question caught Dean unawares. The tone made it clear, he wasn’t asking about the case or the trip east to New England. He was asking about him.

“I—” Dean paused. “I’m fine.”

“Really?” Cas sounded exasperated. “Because it seems to me like you’re wavering wildly between avoiding me and not wanting me out of your sight.”

Dean exhaled slowly. “I left you down there to do this case, didn’t I?”

“You had no choice,” came the prim reply. “And I’m in the bunker, Dean, watching Jack. You still know exactly where I am, and you’ve called me several times since you left. You also—” Whatever else it was that Dean had done, Cas left it unspoken.

Dean shrugged, before suddenly recalling that Cas couldn’t see him. “Someone has to watch the kid, and he likes you best. He’s your kid now, Cas, as much as he’s anybody’s. He chose you. Your responsibility is to him.”

“Yes,” Cas’s reply was dull and almost whispered. “I suppose it is.”

Sam tapped Dean on the shoulder, holding up a paper tray of coffee cups.

“Gotta go Cas. Call you when we get there.”

Cas hung up without saying goodbye.

Taking a deep gulp of the lukewarm gas-station coffee, Dean slid back into the driver’s seat.

“That Cas?” Sam asked conversationally as he folded his ungainly frame down into the passenger side.

“Mmhmm,” Dean confirmed, saying as little as possible. “He’s good, Jack’s good. Where are we stopping first?”

Sam rolled his eyes as he looked out at the tarmac. Luckily, Dean was focused on backing out of the parking lot and didn’t see anything.

“There’s a bar on Main Street—Gaiman’s. Seems to be the only social spot locally, and it’s where the first victim went crazy,” Sam opened up his phone’s GPS. “About an hour and forty minutes ‘til we’re there.”

Nodding and cranking up AC/DC’s “Evil Walks”, Dean pulled out onto the main road heading east and sped them on their way.

 

***

 

The town was worse than either Sam or Dean had thought it might be. The air was filled with an odd feeling of dampness that permeated their bones almost as soon as the peeling “Welcome to Dunwich” sign zipped past on the right. They wished they hadn’t read the rest: “Population 384”, “Most Misty Spot in the East!”, “Miskatonic River Views. Beware Low Lying Fog”.

Ever since they’d taken the left fork at Aylesbury pike, bringing them onto the final approach to the town, Sam and Dean had noticed the increasing amount of abandoned buildings that dotted the landscape. Tumbledown barns turned slowly into decrepit factories, leading to streets with rows of crumbling houses and derelict storefronts.

The sights didn’t really improve as they pulled into town, though they were at least somewhat obscured by the oft-promised fog.

Gaiman’s Bar was dark inside; Sam found himself squinting as soon as they entered. The few lights that attempted to illuminate the dark wood paneling were yellow-tinged and poor, making the whole space feel dimmer than if there were no lights at all..

There were only a couple of steps down from street level before the bar began in earnest, but somehow the tarmac outside already felt far, far away. Everything within the main room seemed dated, all patterned carpet and ornately framed paintings, dusty fabric light shades, and lumpy plastered ceiling.

Sam felt out of place as he stepped towards the bar. Most of the furniture was delicate and wooden, the kind of mildewed-smelling Victoriana that could just as easily be found in a dump as in an antique store. Sam eyed the barstool distrustfully, before deciding to forgo it entirely. He leaned forward instead, his arms on the bar counter.

“Local brew, or somthin’ fancy?” An extremely tall, slim man emerged from a door at the end of the bar, slipping behind the counter.

The barman was dressed in a grotesquely bright yellow sweater that looked even worse under the rare dots of similarly-colored light. It looked like the kind of hand-knit thing that you’d sneak into the trash the day after Christmas, but Sam dragged his eyes away from it. He wasn’t here to judge people’s clothing choices.

“Local brew?” Sam heard Dean question from next to his elbow. His brother had also chosen to skip the stools, apparently.

“Shoggoth’s Ol’ Peculiar,” the barman continued in an odd drawl that seemed out of place this far up the East Coast. He gestured to one of the taps, advertising a local beer with a label that appeared to feature a rather grotesque tentacled creature.

Reaching into his pocket, Sam retrieved his fake Fed badge. “Not on the job, sorry,” he smiled evenly at the older looking gentleman, casting a side eye at Dean.

Dean pulled out his badge too, somewhat reluctantly, and picked up Sam’s spiel. “Yes, another time. I’m Agent Howard,” he nodded toward Sam, “this is my partner, Agent Phillips.”

“We’re here investigating a spate of deaths in the area. We believe one of the victims may have been in your bar the day she died?” Sam continued.

Reaching into his suit jacket, Dean extracted the photograph that Sam had printed for them, offering it to the barman.

“I’m Flagg,” the barman nodded. “Randall Flagg. Owned this place since my pop passed twenty years back.” He leaned over the bar, peering down at the photograph Dean offered him. His thin face was solemn. “Yes indeed, that there would be Miss Jett. Went crazed ‘bout six feet from your feet, sirs,” he indicated a spot further back on the carpet. It looked no different than any other patch. “Then wen’ and dropped herself in the Miskatonic, by all accounts.”

Sam nodded as he tucked his badge back into his jacket. “Did you know her at all?”

Randall Flagg sucked loudly on his front teeth for a second before answering, producing an odd squeaking sound. “Aye, ‘spose. As much as everyone knows everyone else ‘round here. It’s not a big town. But you probably won’t find many close to her,” he added regretfully. “Her family up and left shortly after they foun’ the body. Was a bit too much for ‘em.”

“Right, of course,” Sam offered a smile. “Do you remember anything about the day she was here, before she drowned?”

For a moment the man looked like he wouldn’t answer, folding his arms across his chest and regarding them intensely. His eyes were gray, Sam noted.

“Anything at all,” Dean coaxed. “Did she drink, meet friends here?”

“The usual,” Flaggl responded, his arms dropping as he seemed to decide to cooperate. “She met up with some of the local girls, ‘bout the same age. Too young to drink, but I’m not sayin’ no one gave her nothin’ when I wasn’t lookin’,” he admitted.

Dean grinned, “Well, kids will be kids. The Bureau has bigger fish to fry, Mister Flagg. It’s fine. We really just want to know how she was acting before her death, anything unusual that might have happened, who she was with, that kind of thing.”

“Well now,” Flagg made the awful teeth-sucking noise again, “It was a couple months back, but I gave a pretty detailed report to the Sheriff at the time. Been around these parts all his life, August Dereleth. You’ll be wanting to speak to him, I suppose.”

Sam nodded in response, trying not to grimace at the irritating sounds the man made. “Yes, we’ll get your report from him. But if you think of anything else…”

Randall Flagg smiled politely, but he took a step backward, retreating further behind the bar. It was an effective, if silent, dismissal. Clearly, they wouldn’t get anything else from him.

Usually, after ten minutes in such a dim room, stepping back out into the fresh air would be a relief. But there was really nothing fresh about the air in Dunwich. Foggy, slightly fishy smelling perhaps, but definitely not fresh. The sky was gray and dull. Sam and Dean both shivered involuntarily, ducking back into the Impala before they exchanged any words.

“Shifty,” Dean surmised as he peeled away from the curb.

“Definitely, though I’m undecided if he knows more or if he’s just freakin’ weird,” Sam offered.

Dean nodded his approval. “Me too. Let’s grab some lunch and then we’ll try the Sheriff, I guess.”

Sam agreed, and they headed reluctantly to the town’s only drive-thru food option—a ramshackle McDonald’s that looked like Ronald had given up and abandoned it in the seventies.  

Scowling around his cardboard-like burger, Dean stared glumly at the road. “I already hate this place.”


	2. The Yellow Sign

 

**~The Yellow Sign~**

 

 

Dunwich Police Department wasn’t in much better shape than any other place in town. The sign was crooked, the chain that had once held it level rusted and snapped. The building would have once been a cute red brick structure, but the air was so damp that most of the façade was sheathed in moss and mold. The wooden parts were bare, stripped of paint, and had the same crumbly, forgotten look to them that everything else in town shared.

Dean stepped aside as an older man walked down the four steps leading up to the door. He glared his way past, his jaw working a large clump of chewing tobacco as he limped downwards. He paused for a second to spit into the overgrown bushes before shuffling off down the street. Dean wrinkled his nose.

“People around here just seem _lovely_ ,” he muttered.

Sam nodded. “When I went into the store to pay for the gas on the way here, the kid behind the register barely even noticed I was there. Just staring into space. Honestly, this town is so depressing maybe the vics _did_ all kill themselves,” he mused softly as they entered.

Dean raised a considering eyebrow at Sam before moving up toward the reception desk in front of them. An older woman in a powder blue cardigan and many, many yellow bracelets greeted him.

“Afternoon sir. You’re certainly not from around here,” she smiled thinly. “I’m Maggie Bryce, I administer all the Sheriff’s business in town.”

“Agent Howard,” Dean flashed his badge before nodding to Sam, “and Agent Phillips. Is the Sheriff around? We have a few questions.”

Maggie blinked twice. “Federal officers? In Dunwich? Whatever for?” She placed a hand on her chest, her fingers splayed dramatically across the pastel knit fabric.

“There seems to have been an uptick in deaths across the town over the last two months,” Sam offered. “We’ve been asked to come down and look through the files, just to check that everything is above board.”

“They were all ruled suicides,” came a booming voice from the office to the left. Out stepped a very large man, only a little shorter than Sam, with a thick white beard. He was bald other than the facial hair, and was regarding them with suspicious, squinting eyes.

Sam and Dean both turned, and he slowly offered out his hand.

“Sheriff August Dereleth.” He gestured for them to enter the office behind him. “Howard and Phillips, was it?”

“Yessir,” Dean lead, stepping into the office with Sam on his heels. “No reason to suggest that any of them weren’t suicides,” he soothed with a winning smile. “The Bureau just has a certain duty to check on things when there’s a sudden spate of deaths, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

The Sheriff nodded, though he still seemed cautious. “I’m sure you’re just doing whatever your boss told you to do, fellas. But I assure you, the deaths were all well investigated.”

Sam smiled encouragingly and swept his arm to indicate the neat piles of files and carefully organized cabinets that the office was filled with. “We’re certainly not trying to say they weren’t. You seem to run a tight ship around here, Sheriff—I’m sure it’ll just be a routine flick through the files and we’ll be out of your hair,” he flattered.  

“Well, I can give you access to the investigation files,” August acquiesced. “There’s a room at the back here, behind Maggie, where you can make copies. The coroner’s reports are kept in the adjacent building.”

Dean raised an eyebrow questioningly as he started collecting up the files August was pulling from his desk.

“It’s a small town,” he continued, explaining. “Our coroner is also our funeral director. He owns the building next door, but it’s only open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”

Sam tried to hide his amused smile at the town’s quaint little ways. “So we’ll need to head over there quickly, or they’ll be closed until Wednesday,” he noted.

August nodded, plopping the last neatly labeled file onto the pile Dean now held. “Seems so, sirs.”

The Sheriff seemed edgy, helpful enough but letting his eyes linger on them both a moment too long with every look.

“Alright then,” Sam turned to Dean. “You okay to make the copies while I go meet the Coroner-slash-funeral director?”

Dean chuckled, his nose already in the files. “Go for it. I’ll meet you back at the car.”

Smoothing down his navy FBI suit, Sam ducked out of the small office.

Dean remained and was soon ushered out of the side office by Sheriff Dereleth, up past administrator Maggie, to another tiny room at the back where a distinctly ancient-looking photocopier sat.

The Sheriff stood in the doorway, watching Dean carefully as he painstakingly copied the police reports. Dean knew that August wouldn’t stop him, the records were technically supposed to be available for public access, but it still unnerved him the way the man was watching his every move.

Finally done with all the papers, he made to return them to their files when August spoke up.

“Agent Howard,” he paused, moistening his lips, and looked away as he continued. “I hope you’ll find what you need in the papers. If you don’t and you wanna speak to some of the locals, you’ll probably find them...less than helpful.”

August paused briefly, returning his gaze to Dean with an air of nervousness.

“You may have the most luck with Lin Carter, if you’re careful. She works at the diner half way up Sentinel Hill. She lost her sister,” he gestured to the files, “as you’ll see.”

Dean regarded him curiously, before nodding slowly. “Thank you. I’ll take the tip.”

The Sheriff nodded quickly as he reached out to take the files from Dean, tucking them under one arm. He offered his other hand.

“Hopefully you won’t need to stop by again, but have Maggie call me if you do.”

“Yessir,” Dean responded amiably, grabbing his copies.

As he shook the Sheriff’s hand, he couldn’t help but notice that his cufflinks were yellow.

 

***

 

Sam knocked sharply on the door to Strickland Funeral Home, his eyes busy scanning the outside of the building. It was, predictably, damp and decrepit.

The door stuck midway for a second as it opened, but with a hefty pull, a short red-headed man was revealed.

“Nobody is dead today,” he proclaimed in a flat, uncaring voice.

Sam blinked and went for his badge. “Agent Phillips. Sheriff sent me for some files.”

The small man stepped aside, glowering.

Sam immediately found himself hoping that the funeral director was a little more amiable at funerals than he was currently being. Standing awkwardly in the narrow corridor, he looked down at the man and pointedly waited for him to say something.

“Brad Strickland,” he offered a hand. “Coroner, funeral director, pallbearer, undertaker—around here, if it’s dead, it comes to Strickland’s,” he commented with a humorless smile.

Sam offered a brief, uneasy laugh, not really sure how to respond. Patting his pocket as he tucked his fake FBI badge safely back into place, he gestured up the hallway, indicating that the death-man should lead the way.

“What files?” Brad Strickland only looked to be in his early thirties, but his voice was quite gruff. He looked back at Sam over his shoulder as he led him past the waiting room to an unremarkable office. It was lined with metal filing cabinets, and had a desk that was bare except for a few receipts and an old typewriter.

“All of the bodies that were pulled out of the Miskatonic river in the last two months,” Sam said.

Strickland looked up sharply. “All the crazy folk, you mean.”

“Perhaps,” Sam countered coolly.

The funeral director made a displeased _hrmphf_ sound, but moved over to the closest of the metal filing cabinets. He talked as he flicked through. “Feds think someone killed ‘em, huh? Big cover up in the little town no one cares about?”

Sam fixed his eyes distastefully on the back of Strickland’s head. “Perhaps,” he repeated.

Rather than hand the files straight to Sam, Strickland moved around to the other side of the barren desk and dropped the files on it. He propped his feet up on the top like a self-promoting mob boss from a terrible movie, his fingers linked across his chest.

“Take them, then. I’ve got copies. You can let yourself out.”

Uneasy, Sam reached across to grab the files from next to Brad Strickland’s crossed ankles. His socks were yellow.

 

***

 

A 1967 Chevrolet Impala really stood out in Dunwich. There were very few cars around to start with, let alone pristine, loved, shiny classics like Dean’s. He noticed a fair number of glances passed his way as he reclined in the driver’s seat while he waited for Sam. He preened a little, proud of his Baby and how well he cared for her.

Drawing his attention back within the car, Dean scrolled through his phone to his newly-corrected “Cas” contact. He gave it a tiny smile; it just looked wrong spelled any other way. The phone only rang for a moment.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Hey, Cas. Bunker still in one piece?” Dean joked, though there was an element of honesty to his query.

“We’re both still alive. Though there is a pencil embedded in the side of one of the library bookcases.”

“The solid oak bookcases?” Dean asked cautiously.

“Yes, unfortunately,” Cas sighed. “Jack is improving though. The last pencil was a lot more controlled.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dean offered, deciding not to ask any further. He shifted in his seat, tilting back against the headrest so that he focused on the roof of the car for a moment. “You doing okay?”

There was a brief silence before Cas spoke again. “Dean, I feel I should apologize for this morning. I was…grumpy.”

Dean blinked in surprise and found himself smiling. “Me too, buddy. I’m sorry for being all over the place. Since you got back I’ve just been—well I’ve been an ass. There are things that are more important than—”

“Dean,” Cas interrupted softly. “Jack is not more important. He’s at a high risk of accidentally causing severe problems, but he’s not more important than you.”

Dean’s mouth snapped shut and he found himself flushed, suddenly grateful that he was alone in the car. _How does Cas always do that,_ he thought. _Cut through all of my BS and see something I’m barely aware of myself?_

Cas filled Dean’s silence. “I said something wrong again, didn’t I. I should go.”

“Cas, I—”

“Call me if you need any help with the case, Dean.”

Dean stared at his phone screen, blank once more. Cas had hung up. “Dude really needs to work on his goodbyes,” he muttered under his breath.

He spotted Sam emerging from Strickland Funeral Directors with a bundle of files under his arm and cruised the car a few feet down the street to meet him.

Slipping into the passenger seat, Sam waved the files triumphantly. “Got ‘em.”

“Great,” Dean nodded his head towards the papers from the police station which he’d put on the back seat. “Me too. Along with a bit of a tip-off from the Sheriff on someone good to interview.”

“Oh?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “He decided to be helpful in the end, then?”

“Guess so. Says there’s a woman who works in the diner who lost her sister. Might talk to us more easily than the rest,” Dean related the Sheriff’s words quickly as he pulled away from the curb.

“Let's find a motel then,” Sam proposed. “I can start going through all these files and you can go find this woman. Maybe some food, too.”

“Sounds good Sammy,” Dean agreed, coaxing Baby to roar throatily around the corner to take them back towards the highway and find a motel.

 

***

 

A couple of hours later, Dean drove up a steep hill. He was headed to the diner, hoping to catch not only Lin Carter, but some non-McDonald’s food.

It came into view around a bend, a squat little building with striped awnings over the windows and a peeling, yellow-painted sign that said, “Sentinel Diner, est. 1937”.

Parking and hopping swiftly out of the Impala, Dean already had his hand on the door handle when he felt his phone vibrating. Seeing that it was Sam, he paused outside on the sidewalk to take the call.

“Got some news already Sammy?”

“Yeah, I might have actually,” Dean could hear the thinly-veiled excitement in Sam’s voice. “So get this, ten of the fourteen bodies were all claimed by someone other than immediate family.”

“Who?” Dean looked up and down the street habitually, but there was no movement.

“What, actually. An organization by the name of The Malkira Foundation.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous.”

“Sure does,” Sam agreed. “I’m researching them now. They’re based in the town. They call themselves “benevolent local benefactors” and they seem to have their fingers in a lot of pies.”

“Speaking of pies—”

Dean almost heard Sam’s eye roll.

“Okay, Dean. I’ll keep researching. Call me back after you get some pie.”

Slipping his phone back into his interior pocket, Dean moved on into the diner. It was dilapidated, like the whole town, but it at least seemed clean. The place was empty. Diners were usually quieter in the middle of the afternoon between lunch and dinner, Dean knew, but this place was dead.

A young red-headed woman with freckles gave Dean a winning smile as he approached the counter.

“Good afternoon, what can I get you?”

“Well,” Dean grinned out of pure relief that someone in this town knew how to smile. “I’m actually looking for Lin Carter, but two cheeseburgers, two fries and pie to go are just as important.”

The waitress chuckled lightly, pointing her pen towards a booth to her left. “Take a seat, she’s in the back. I’ll send her out. You want apple or pecan?”

“Both.”

Smiling charmingly, Dean settled into the indicated seat and began to peruse the little cardboard menu that was propped up between the salt and pepper. The food seemed like simple, standard diner fare.

“You the guy who ordered the cheeseburgers and pie?” A softly-spoken, Amazonian-looking woman moved across the diner towards Dean. Coming to a stop in front of him, she rested her hip against the table edge. Looking him up and down, a small frown creased her brow. “I don’t know you.”

“Lin?” Dean questioned, extending one hand to shake while the other dove into his suit jacket for his fake badge. “Lin Carter? I’m Agent Howard. Sheriff Dereleth gave me your name.”

One brown eyebrow rose as her gaze passed over the extended badge. “Yes, I’m Lin. August sent you to me?”

“He sure did,” Dean gestured to the other side of the booth. He pulled a warm smile onto his face, attempting to take what he thought of as _The Sammy Approach_ to this interview. “Why don’t you take a seat? You aren’t under suspicion of anything, ma’am, my partner and I are just doing some investigating in town and hoped you might help us out.”

“Investigating, huh.” Lin’s lips pulled tight, but she lowered herself into the booth directly opposite Dean. “So you want to talk about my sister.”

“Yes,” Dean began apologetically. “Sometimes when there’s a sudden increase in deaths in an area, we get drafted in to go behind the local police department and just check everything over. It’s standard procedure.”

“So you’re just rechecking what’s been done, not investigating any further.” Lin folded her arms, beginning to close off.

“I wouldn’t say that’s quite true,” Dean responded carefully, watching the woman retreat before his eyes and hoping to pull her back in. “If we’re given any reason to believe we should, we’ll take over the investigation and get it looked at again from the ground up.”

Lin sat quietly, looking at Dean intently but offering nothing.

Dean leaned forward across the table, lacing his fingers together. “Ms. Carter—” he ventured carefully, “do you believe your sister’s death needs to be investigated further?”

Lin’s brown eyes met Dean’s green ones sharply. “My sister wouldn’t kill herself. I don’t care what Brad Strickland has to say about it—it wasn’t a suicide. If the coroner thinks it was, then maybe we need a new coroner.”

 _Score,_ Dean thought, leaning back into his chair again with an understanding nod to the woman. “Then why don’t you tell me what happened,” he coaxed.

Lin leaned forward this time, keeping her voice low. “Shelley and I only moved here at the beginning of summer. I don’t think many new people come to this place…” she gestured vaguely out of the window next to them. “We were outsiders here.”

Dean nodded, keeping quiet but indicating for her to continue.

“It was hard to fit in. The locals are very tight-knit. My sister Shelley though, she was befriended by one of Them.”

The way Lin phrased her response, Dean could hear the capital T on “Them” as clear as day. He suspected he knew what was coming, but he smiled encouragingly anyway. “Who?’

“Keziah Mason, the head of the Malkira Foundation.”

 _Bingo,_ Dean thought, keeping his face carefully neutral. “It wasn’t a good thing, to be befriended by a prominent local figure?” He questioned carefully.

Lin eyed him for a minute, picking nervously at the skin around her cuticles.

“You can tell me, Lin,” Dean encouraged. “I’m not from around here. I just want to find the truth.”

She nodded. “It was a good thing at first, I suppose. She went to these meetings at the Foundation House. I thought she was making friends, fitting in.”

“She wasn’t?” Dean questioned, an uncomfortable feeling of alarm building in his stomach.

“At first. Then she became secretive, when we’ve always been close. Then after the suicides started happening… to start with, she’d say odd things. Like, ‘Jess is serving her purpose now’ and stuff,” Lin quoted. “She started to freak me out and I tried to talk to her about it. She seemed… it seemed like she listened. She stopped going to the meetings, tried to back off a bit.”

Lin stopped talking, her lip quivering.

“So you think that when she tried to leave…” Dean trailed off, trying to help her.

“Yeah. I think.”

The red-headed waitress appeared with a large paper bag, smiling as she interrupted them. “Two cheeseburger meals, fries, and two pieces of pie.”

“Thanks… Alice,” Dean responded to her, noting with a smirk the name and phone number scribbled onto the bag. Dean handed her one of the plentiful credit cards from his wallet.

She winked and stepped away. Dean returned his attention to Lin, who had gone understandably quiet.

“I appreciate you talking to me, Lin.” He spoke as gently as he could, channeling his inner-Sam. Grabbing a napkin, he jotted down a phone number while he waited for his credit card to come back. “If you feel more comfortable discussing this in private, or there’s other information you think might be relevant… you can give me, or my partner Agent Phillips, a call on this number, okay?”

Lin accepted the napkin in silence, staring down at her hands as she held it. After a moment, she rose from her seat, folding the phone number and tucking it into the pocket of her apron.

About to leave, she turned back. “The Foundation House closes around ten at night, so if you really do want to talk to Keziah Mason the best time to catch her is at home after that. Or at the House before.” Her look was almost challenging, as if she doubted Dean would investigate at all.

“I’ll be checking into it, Ms. Carter,” he promised.

“Thank you, Agent Howard.” Lin stepped away as Dean’s credit card was returned.

Tucking the bag of food under his arm, Dean made his way out into the small parking lot.

As he approached Baby, he noticed a scruffy black bird sitting on her roof.

The bird—a crow, he guessed—merely turned it's head to the side and examined Dean eerily with one eye. It let out an ear-splitting “ _Caw! Caw!”_.

Dean was instantly locked in a stare down with the crow on his car, shouting to no one in particular, “Oh come on! Creepy locals? Fog? Now fucking crows?”

The bird eyed him haughtily with one eye as if to say, “What’s wrong with crows?”

“If you’ve scratched Baby’s paintwork, I’m going to stuff you,” Dean threatened. “Flap on back to your shitty B-movie, asshole.”

It eyed him again, before beating its wings just once and launching up into the air.

“That’s right! You better not come back!” Dean’s fist waved, his eyes frantically searching the Impala roof for damage.

The crow did one large loop, before shitting down the front of Dean’s suit with a loud “Caw!” and gliding off into the distance.

Grimacing, Dean rooted around for a kleenex before dialing Sam’s number.

“How’d it go?” Sam answered.

“I really don’t like this town. It's getting worse and worse,” Dean grumbled before responding to the question. “Call me crazy Sam, but whether it’s supernatural or human, I think we have a cult on our hands.”

“I agree,” Sam intoned solemnly. “Head on back here Dean, so I can show you what I’ve dug up.”

Dean swiped desolately at his bird-crap suit. “On my way, Sam.”


	3. The Strange High House in the Mist

 

**~The Strange High House in the Mist~**

 

 

Before Dean entered the motel room, he sent a quick text update to Cas.

 **||** _Looks like a cult. Not sure if human or monster yet. Bunker still standing?_

He told himself that he wasn’t avoiding calling to give Cas the update. He was just in a hurry, was all. The fact that he knew Cas would have preferred to speak to him was irrelevant.

Sam was sat on one of the twin beds, laptop on his lap as he stretched his long legs out across the sheets. He perched amid a sea of papers; sheets ripped from a spiral-bound pad that, Dean guessed, Sam was trying to arrange into some kind of order or pattern.

“Cheeseburger and fries. Pie if you want it,” Dean announced, closing the door behind himself.

Sam looked up quickly before returning to his research. “Thanks, I’m starving. Who’s Alice?” he asked with a smirk, seeing the name on the bag.

“Eh, a girl at the diner. Didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but not really my type.”

Sam raised an eyebrow but chose to focus his attention firmly on the laptop.

Shucking off his suit jacket, Dean placed it on the back of the lone chair before moving toward the other bed. He dropped his phone on the nightstand, then sat down and passed Sam over one of the boxes from Sentinel Diner. “Progress?” he asked, nodding at the scattered pages.

“Of a kind,” Sam answered, his attention still on the laptop screen as he eased open the food container. Throwing a fry into his mouth, he tapped his finger on the screen. “This Foundation is definitely suspicious. They aren’t a licensed charity or anything of the sort. Every article I can find online mentioning them seems to keep using the same phrases about benevolence and supporting the local community—but it’s too similar, it’s like they’ve all been fed the same carefully crafted press release, y’know?”

Dean nodded, letting him continue.

“They don’t keep membership records online or anything like that, but going through the local paper and looking at photographs and mentions of the Foundation, it looks like at least half, if not more, of the victims were members.”

“That agrees with what I found,” Dean said around a chunk of cheeseburger. “Correlation isn’t causation, we know that, but the woman I interviewed was definitely indicating that she thinks these Malkira people had something to do with her sister’s death.”  

Sam lifted his gaze then, looking over to Dean as he grabbed a few more fries. “Directly?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, his voice muffled by meat, “As in, she was a member and tried to get out—then turned up dead.”

Sam grimaced, but his response was preempted by Dean’s cell phone vibrating its way across the nightstand.

Dean looked over to see the screen. Cas was calling. One hand rubbing at the side of his neck, he used the other to decline the call. “I’ll speak to him in a little bit.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, openly accusing. “Did you get in a fight?”

“What? No,” Dean defended, shoving a handful of fries past his lips.

Neatly gathering his papers into a stack, Sam opened and closed his mouth a few times. When he finally decided to speak, what came out sounded more disappointed than annoyed. “Honestly, I kinda hoped things would be different once he came back.”

A cocky, dismissive expression came across Dean’s face and he opened his mouth, clearly about to joke or throw the comment back at Sam. But at his brother’s solemn look, he dropped his gaze.

Pushing his fries across the mattress so he could pull one of his feet up onto the bed, Dean responded very quietly as he re-laced his boot. “So did I.”

Sam blinked and cleared his throat. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, having not really expected a response at all. “So why aren’t things different?”

Dean threw Sam a quick sideways look, before his eyes returned to the safety of his boot. “I just—” he struggled. “I watched him die. And now he’s all about Jack—”

“Oh come on, Dean, that’s—”

“I know, I know,” Dean held up a hand at Sam’s exasperated expression, even though he hadn’t looked up to see it. “He’s always going to throw himself into danger, Sam.”

“Like you don’t.” Sam folded his arms.

“I do. But that doesn’t make it easier to forget what losing him felt like,” Dean responded, raw and honest.

Sam parted his lips, but found he had no words. He gave Dean a sympathetic smile. He got it. It sucked, but he got it. So instead, he rose from the bed and stretched. Holding out the top piece of paper from his research pile to Dean, he tilted his head toward the bathroom.

“This is the address of the Malkira Foundation building. I’m going to grab a shower, then we can come up with a plan, yeah?”

Dean nodded, his smile grateful for a moment—but it dissolved into a frown as his phone started ringing again. “Go ahead, Sammy. I’ll jump in when you’re done, then we’ll go snoop around the cult.”

 

***

 

Hours later, in the pitch-dark night, Dean pulled Baby up to the curb of a winding, steep road, curiously signed as simply “The Street.”

Squinting through the mist, Sam nodded his head towards a high, skinny house four or five buildings up from where he’d parked. Given that they planned to break into the place if they could, it didn't seem wise to park right outside, under the insipid yellow street lamp.

“That’s it, for sure. Check out the sign,” Sam muttered as he and Dean rooted through the trunk, grabbing various weapons and tools.

“People of Malkira Benevolent Foundation and Community Outreach,” Dean quoted from the signpost near the gate. “Why is it always yellow around here,” Dean wrinkled his nose, gesturing at the peeling paint.

Sam’s frown disappeared under his balaclava. “I’d noticed that too. All the people we spoke to were wearing some shade of yellow,” he considered.

“Except Lin,” Dean noted. “I didn’t see a speck of yellow on her.”

Dean hummed in agreement as they slipped along the side of the building. The blueprints they had found through the planner’s office showed that when the house was renovated at the beginning of the year, there had been a hatch put in at the back leading down to the basement. A perfect entrypoint.

Crowbar in hand, Dean kept to the shadows as he approached the locked wooden door.

Sam stood watch while Dean eased the lock off as quietly as he could. When it finally broke there was a loud clang of metal, and both brothers dived back into the shadows of the side passageway, waiting.

Minutes passed with no sound or alarms.

“Seems like everybody went home,” Sam hissed.

Slowly, Dean nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

They progressed down the steps into the total darkness of the basement. Sam expected it to smell damp, and he wasn’t sure whether it didn’t, or if the whole town smelled like that and he was just getting used to it.

The room was very cold. Dean carefully felt around for the bottom step of the little ladder, then eased his feet onto the basement floor. He felt Sam stand next to him, but couldn’t see a thing. There were rustling noises as both of them dug in their packs for flashlights.

When Dean had the solid weight of his in hand, he covered the end of it with his palm before flicking it on, not quite sure what they’d find.

He heard Sam take in a sharp breath beside him.

 _Oh no,_ Dean thought, a million options racing through his head. _Bodies? A torture chamber? Vampire den? Witches dungeon?_ The one thing he didn’t expect, was for the room to be a chapel.

Slowly removing his hand from the end of the flashlight, the beam cut through the darkness to the nearest wall, illuminating a large cross. All around it, the wall was painted with frescoes of a winged man—an angel, Dean assumed, though not one whose vessel he recognized. There were benches for people to sit at, and the edges of the room were lined with narrow tables holding books, statues and sigils.

Something felt off, as Dean swung his flashlight around. He knew from Sam’s silence that he felt it too.

As he turned to the final side of the room, it finally registered. Where was Jesus? Where was God? Where were Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, Raphael? They were usually all over the place in these kinds of religious paintings. On the final side of the room, there was a huge, bigger-than-lifesize statue. Both Sam and Dean trained their flashlights on it in silence.  

The angel depicted had beautiful, outstretched ebony wings and flowing robes. Just like Dean had once assumed all angels would appear, had he believed in them at all. But this angel’s robes were dark and hooded, and in place of the serene, haughty visage one would expect on an angel statue, there was an exquisitely carved skull. It gleamed white in the flashlights, it’s eyes endless black holes.

The statue was covered in splatters of a dark, sticky looking substance that Dean had no desire to touch or sample. He’d say it was blood and not worry whose or whats.

This wasn’t a holy chapel like it should be, Dean realized. This wasn’t a Christian place. This was idol worship, and this idol was horrific.

 

 

 

***

 

“Sorry for calling in the middle of the night,” Sam began, rooting in the trunk of the Impala for some spare bags.

“I don’t sleep,” Cas pointed out flatly. “I tried to call Dean earlier.”

“Yeah,” Sam responded, pausing in his digging around. “I saw.”

“Is he mad at me?” Cas questioned quietly. Sam could hear him moving around on the other end of the line.

“No, he’s not. He just—” Sam didn’t know what to say. “He’s still dealing with some stuff. When you were gone it was pretty hard on him. Now you’ve been back a while, but—”

“He hates Jack.” Cas interrupted.

“That’s not it. Dean has valid reasons for not trusting Jack. We both know that. Not nice reasons, but valid ones. But he doesn’t hate him. I think he’s more jealous than he’s admitting, even to himself.” Sam grimaced, realizing what he’d said. “I mean, uh, Dean is just—”

“Sam. You didn’t call me at this time of night to talk about Dean.”

Sam exhaled with relief. “No, I didn’t. This case is seeming more supernatural by the minute, buddy. We think it might be your kind of thing.”

“My kind of thing?”

Sam could picture the squint Cas would be making, even if he couldn’t see it. He nodded to himself, closing the Impala trunk with bags under his arm. “An angel thing.”

“You think an angel is responsible for these deaths?” Cas sounded quite disbelieving.

“Maybe. We found some kind of grotesque chapel in the Foundation’s basement. Dean’s there now and I’m headed back to him. We’re gathering what we can from the books and clues around the room. It seems like idol worship.”

“Do you know who it is? Which angel?”  Cas’s voice was sharp at the suggested blasphemy.

“The books keep mentioning a name—Sammael.”

Silence.

“Cas?”

“You’re sure? Sammael?”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of instances. Sigils, a huge statue. He has a skull face,” Sam explained.

“That doesn’t sound like him, Sam. It really doesn’t.”

“I don’t know what to tell you Cas. Is there any way you can—”

“Of course. I’ll call Jody and ask her to come down and stay with Jack. I’ll leave now.”

“Thanks, man,” Sam began walking back up to the Malkira Foundation building, bags in tow, so that he and Dean could collect some of the books and scrolls around the room.

He didn’t notice the tiny yellow light in the topmost window of the building.

 

***

 

Jack merely smiled serenely when Castiel told him he was leaving for New England.

“I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t intend to leave, especially not when we’ve been making such progress with controlling your powers,” Castiel apologized, dropping his duffle bag into the passenger seat of his old Continental.

Dean had fixed the gold car up for him, putting in hours at the bunker to make it run smoothly and be as safe and comfortable as possible. Castiel had never asked him to, nor was he overly bothered about the state of the vehicle, but he knew that Dean’s attention to it was just his way of showing he cared, so he let it happen.

“Dean and Sam are very important to you,” Jack observed. “You should go to them, I will be fine. Jody seems nice.”

“Dean and Sam trust her, so I do, too. Call me if you need anything,” Castiel offered, reaching to pull the boy into a hug before he left.

Clapping Castiel on the back, Jack smiled warmly and waved the car off as he departed, speeding off into the night.

It was a long drive to Massachusetts from Kansas. Castiel drove fast, his reflexes far superior to any human’s, but there were only so many hours he could knock off the drive. Even leaving as soon as he had, it would be late that night before he reached Dunwich.

There was no traffic before dawn, so Castiel was able to pull straight onto the highway and forge east. With the long, straight interstate road heading out in front of him, he dug into his suit pocket beneath his trench coat, pulling out his phone.

“Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.” Castiel couldn’t quite help the small smile that tugged at him as he greeted his friend. “I’m on the road now, headed out of Kansas.”

“Alright. Jack okay?”

“Yes,” Castiel kept his tone neutral, as almost always. “He was content to wait for Jody after he spoke to her. She left before I did, so she’ll be at the bunker any time now.”

“Good. That’s good.” Dean responded quietly.

For a minute, silence stretched.

“Think you’ll make it here tonight?” Dean questioned suddenly.

“Early hours of the morning, most likely,” Castiel responded. “I’ll need you to text me the address of your motel. I can still—” he cut himself off , suddenly.

“Still what?” Dean’s voice was curious.

“I can still...sense you, I suppose you’d call it. But it’s not as accurate as it used to be.”

“Oh,” Dean paused for a second, before deciding to respond with humor, as he almost always did. “Don’t like me as much these days, buddy? Got your angel senses pinned somewhere else, huh?”

And as he almost always did, Castiel steam rolled straight through Dean’s humor. “Not at all. I like you more than ever, Dean. I’ve just been away from Heaven a long time. My powers aren’t what they were.”

Dean ignored the first part of his response, of course. “You’re still an angel, Cas. That still makes you more of a badass than the rest of us. Anyway,” he changed the subject firmly. “What’s up with this Sammael dude?”

“Sammael was one of the first angels that my father made after the archangels,” Castiel explained. “He’s a seraph, actually, like me.”

“So six wings, bed-head and socially awkward?”

“Wings, yes, but the rest is probably just me,” Castiel admitted. “Sammael was worshipped extensively in Israel, in pre-Canaanite times. But long before that, he became what you would think of as the first reaper.”

“So are we talking bad guy, or…”

“Not at all,” Castiel sighed. “Just like your average reaper, Sammael only cared for justice and the passage of souls to their correct places. It wasn’t his job to judge, only deliver.”

“So why are these people, all of whom are connected to a cult that seems to be idolizing him, turning up crazy and dead?”

Castiel could hear Dean’s frown, the wrinkles of concentration that always appeared on his brow when he was considering an awkward case.

“I don’t know Dean. As I said to Sam, this doesn’t sound like him at all.”

“Alright. Well, this town is fucking creepy and the locals are distinctly unfriendly, for the most part, so Sam and I are gonna hole up in the motel room today and go through all this stuff we took from the Malkira Foundation,” Dean informed him. “I guess just touch base with us when you’re near town.”

“Okay. Let me know if there are any other developments.”

“Sure. Drive safe, Cas.”

“Of course, Dean.”

Castiel slipped his phone back into his pocket before returning his hand to the wheel so that he could change lanes to head further east. It was still a couple of hours until sunrise, and he had a lot of distance to cover.


	4. The Thing on the Doorstep

 

**~The Thing on the Doorstep~**

 

 

Dean opened the door blearily, gun in hand. It was just after three am.

“Cas,” he croaked, squinting through one half-open eye. “Come in. No chairs. You can sit on my bed, Sam’s all over his. Night.”

With that, he flopped straight back down to sleep again.

When he woke again Cas was, as instructed, perched on the end of Dean’s bed. One of the long sides of the mattress backed up to the wall, so he sat crossways on the bed, his back against the window with his legs stretched out in front of him. On the sheets near Dean’s feet were Sam’s research notes, and several of the books they had borrowed from the Malkira House.

“Good morning, Dean,” he rumbled gently without looking up.

Dean rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes and made a plaintive, incomprehensible noise before burying his face back in the pillow. Cas seemed to understand, despite the lack of verbiage.

“Of course, I’ll be right back. There’s a gas station a couple of miles away, they’ll have coffee.”

Cas pushed his notes aside and stood, smoothing out his trench coat as he opened the door to the parking lot. Looking back over his shoulder, he called to Sam, “Smoothie?”

Sam’s legs were already begrudgingly swinging off the bed. “Hey, Cas. Green juice.”

With a nod, Cas departed.

After a few minutes, Sam stood and nudged Dean’s shoulder. “I’m getting in the shower first. When Cas gets back, we should see what ideas he has about where to go from here.”

He waited momentarily for a response, but obviously, there was none.

Sam had only been in the shower a few minutes when he heard a knock on the door. Grabbing a towel to cover himself and pushing back his dropping hair, he immediately went for the nightstand where his handgun lay. It was far too soon for Cas to be back.

Dean also seemed surprised by the knock—enough that he had his head up off the pillow and was forcing his feet into his boots, scowling.

Still wearing just a towel, Sam gestured for Dean to open the door while he stepped back into the bathroom, but kept his gun in hand.

Throwing on his jeans and shirt quickly, Sam heard a muffled voice before Dean responded.

“Thank you for coming to us, Lin. My partner and I will take a look into it, of course. Our advice would be to get out of town, if that’s at all possible for you.”

Sam stepped out into the bedroom, to see who he assumed to be Lin Carter in the doorway. She was pale, her eyes ringed, and she was nodding to Dean. “Yes, Agent Howard. Thank you. I’m going to go visit my aunt and uncle in Boston, think about what to do from there.”

Her eyes passed briefly to Sam, but she stepped back into the parking lot rather than greet him.

“Thank you again, Lin. Keep my phone number in case anything comes up,” Dean offered quietly. “Hey—how’d you find out we were staying here, by the way?”

Lin’s smile was brief as she pulled her coat tighter around herself in the chill morning air. “Only one motel in town.”

Dean nodded, and she walked off towards her car. Shutting the door, Dean exhaled heavily.

“What happened?” Sam questioned, rubbing at his wet hair with a towel.

“August Dereleth and Brad Strickland are missing.”

“The Sheriff and the coroner?” Sam blinked. “You think...because they talked to us?”

Dean nodded somberly. “It seems pretty likely, doesn’t it? The Malkira Foundation found out someone is nosing around, and is going behind us removing anyone who spoke to us. Lin thought she was next - she found an X in yellow chalk on the door of her house this morning.”

Sam looked uncomfortable but nodded. “Well, I mean, she could be next. It seems to follow the pattern. Good that she’s going to leave.”

The two brothers sat opposite each other on the edge of their beds, Dean rubbing his hands tiredly through his hair while Sam rough-dried his.

Another knock came at the door, accompanied by a call. “It’s me. I have coffee and breakfast.”

Dean stood to admit Cas, grabbing one of the paper cups of coffee he held as soon as Cas had his foot in the door. Lowering the tray of drinks to one of the nightstands, Cas removed a plastic bag from his arm and passed out the sausage and egg bagels it contained. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sensing the mood.

“The woman I interviewed at the diner the day before yesterday found us,” Dean explained in between sips of coffee. “The sheriff and the coroner that we spoke to the same day are both missing. Neither of them turned up to work yesterday.”

“That’s concerning,” Castiel pointed out mildly. “We should search their homes.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Gimme twenty minutes to drink this coffee and get my suit on, we’ll head to the Coroner’s first.”

Sam looked between Dean and Cas very quickly, before turning around and focusing on setting his laptop up. “You two go without me. I’m going to do a little more digging into the Malkira Foundation. See if I can find out where that name came from and when they became a religious organization.”

Cas was focused on gathering up the trash from the bagels, and missed the bitch-face Dean threw at the back of Sam’s head. “Alright Sam,” he commented amiably. “Those seem like good lines of inquiry. Dean and I will go and see if the Coroner left us any clues.”

 

***

 

The Coroner hadn’t left them any clues. It was like he’d just stood up and decided to leave, then not come back. The house was neat and tidy, but not like someone had packed it away; it was just orderly, with no signs of a struggle or forced entry.

If his car hadn’t been in the driveway and his wallet on the hallway table, it would have been easy enough to think he had just popped out to the store.

The small house seemed to reveal a very ordinary and kind of dull man, Dean decided. One of the bedrooms was dedicated to miniature trains, and there were collections of stamps in binders on the coffee table. A cuckoo clock squawked horridly in the hallway, making Cas jump in a way that had put Dean into a fit of giggles.

Nothing else.

Cas walked from room to room, sniffing here and there in that way he had (which still freaked Dean out a little). He found nothing either.

“Everything seems very normal, Dean,” he offered as they stood in the living room. “We should wipe down any prints we might have left and get out of here. The police have already been, but they might return.”

Dean nodded in agreement. “Yeah. You’re right.”

They took a few minutes to wipe down anything they’d touched with clean rags. Dean was polishing the cloth along the bedroom door handle when his phone rang.

“Hey Sammy,” he tucked the phone into his neck as he worked.

“Dean. You and Cas need to get out of there are fast as you can. I hooked up Dad’s old police radio scanner in the Continental to see if I could hear anything about the disappearances while I read up on Sammael. They just found the Coroner’s body—”

“—in the Miskatonic River,” Dean finished for him, tightening his lips. “Of course. We’ll head straight out, and meet back up with you shortly.”

Cas was right beside him, already moving towards the stairs as he heard Dean’s conversation. He looked troubled, but Dean waited until they were safely down the street in Baby before he spoke.

“What’s up, Cas. You’re very quiet and you look like you’re getting a lemon juice enema.”

Cas frowned. “Why on earth would—”

“Just tell me what's wrong,” Dean interrupted, exasperated.

Cas glared, but tucked his hands into his coat pockets and began to speak as Dean guided them back toward the motel. “I realize that Sammael seems like the logical choice for a supernatural suspect here. But it just feels wrong.”

“You don’t think it’s him,” Dean clarified, turning to look quickly at Cas as he drove before paying attention to the misty roads once more.

“No, I don’t. I haven’t spoken to him in hundreds of thousands of years, but he was never evil, Dean. He wouldn’t drive people mad and kill them, or want his followers to do that either. He would never want to be worshipped like that.”

“People change,” Dean offered, though there wasn’t much of a challenge to his voice. “Even angels change.

Cas turned his head to the side, studying Dean’s profile. “That’s true. Even angels change. But I just feel like something doesn’t add up, Dean.”

Dean made a small hum of acknowledgment, but didn’t offer any verbal response.

“We could try and summon him,” Cas offered quietly. “Talk to him.”

Dean turned Baby onto a side-road toward the motel before he took his eyes off the tarmac. “And if it is him? If he does to us whatever he did to those fourteen—maybe even sixteen—people?”

“Then I guess,” Cas sighed and held up his hands in a helpless gesture, “I guess I’m just asking you to trust me, Dean.”

For a minute there was silence in the car as Dean pulled up outside the motel, cutting the Impala’s engine before he turned his body in his seat, his full green attention now on Cas.

“Okay.” He nodded solemnly.

“Okay...you think we should summon Sammael? You think it’s a good idea?” Cas seemed cautious and a little confused.

“No,” Dean corrected firmly, “I think it’s a terrible idea. But I trust you. So let's do it.”

Cas’s surprised, wide grin revealed sharp little incisors that Dean didn’t often get to see; they made him look mischievous and strangely more human.

“Thank you, Dean,” he said warmly, nodding to him before getting out of the car.

Dean thought the idea was possibly suicidal, but the smile was worth it.

 

***

 

Sam was less easily swayed by Cas’s charming smile.

“Cas, if you’re wrong, this could be really dangerous,” he frowned.

“Dean trusts me,” Cas pointed out defiantly, though his voice was quiet as he stood at the end of the bed, hands in his pockets.

Sam’s gaze shot over to Dean, who was casually looking at a spot on the carpet. He rolled his eyes. “Of course Dean trusts you,” Sam sighed.

Cas gave a little confused frown, but didn’t question Sam, instead turning to Dean. “If Sam isn’t comfortable being here for the summoning ritual, I could technically do it alone,” he offered.

“No, Cas,” Dean snapped. “You aren’t doing it alone. That’s the easiest way to turn a bad idea into a plain stupid idea. I’ll do it with you.”

Sam sighed, taking a moment to rearrange his features out of the bitch-face they were determined to form. “Guys. I think this is a bad idea, but I do trust you, Cas. If you want to summon him, that’s fine. But we should also check out August Dereleth’s house, before his body turns up too. We’re working on a time crunch, here.”

That, at least, they all seemed to agree on. After a few minutes of back and forth, they came to the decision that Dean and Cas would stay at the motel and work on the summoning while Sam took a quick trip down to the address he’d managed to find for the sheriff.

The police radio hadn’t informed them of any more bodies yet, so there was at least a chance that the Sheriff was still alive. Though as he’d been the one to tip them off about Lin Carter, it didn’t seem that likely.

“Alright, what do we need to summon this Sammael dude?” Dean asked Cas with a sigh, watching as Sam put on his FBI tie as an extra-precaution cover for his entry to the Sheriff’s home.

“Should just be a standard angel summoning,” Cas considered, “he could resist it, but unless he knows we’re on to him, I don’t know why he would.”

“Okay then,” Dean pushed up off the edge of the bed and headed toward the door. “Let’s take a look in the car and see if we have everything we need. Sam didn’t pack extra salt so who knows what else he left at home.”

Sam muttered something offensive under his breath as he shucked his jacket on.

Dean and Cas were headed back from the Impala by the time Sam was heading out of the motel room, and they all met at the door.

“I’m going to head to the Sheriff’s house first,” Sam informed them, “then I’ll hit up his office after. If I still don’t find anything, maybe I should track down that Maggie woman who works at the police station?”

Dean nodded his agreement. “Good call. Cas says we need a bit more salt and some herbs that we can probably pick up at the grocery store, so we’ll head out to get those.”

Without saying anything, Cas held out his car keys to Sam; there was no question that he and Dean would drive the Impala.

“We should probably find somewhere nearby to do the ritual, Dean,” Cas said once Sam had the keys. “There’s not enough space in the motel room.”

“True,” Dean agreed, moving around Baby toward the driver’s seat. “Shouldn’t be a problem; there’s plenty of abandoned buildings in this creepy-ass town,” he grumbled.

“It does appear rather depressed,” Cas commented as he slid into the passenger side of the Impala. “And I wasn’t aware that New England suffered from quite this much daytime fog.”

“I think it’s something to do with the Miskatonic river,” Dean mused as he headed off in the direction of the town’s only grocery store. “I’d have asked one of the locals, but they haven’t been talkative, despite my best efforts.”

“And you’re usually so charming,” Cas deadpanned, keeping his eyes carefully on the road.

“Hey, I’m a damn delight,” Dean protested, but his green eyes sparkled happily at Cas’s casual, humorous comment.

 _Things are so easy between us when we have a united cause,_ Dean thought to himself. _A shame that life seems to always want to pull us in different directions._

Cas also seemed thoughtful, occasionally looking at Dean as they drove, though he stayed characteristically stoic.

By the time they reached the grocery store a few minutes later, Dean had mapped out a mental list of things to grab. The two men stepped into the building together, making quick work of their short list of herbs, salt, the most bloody leg of lamb they could find, and emergency shotgun shells. Thank goodness for Walmart.

A quick dash back in for extra chalk at Cas’s insistence, and they were good to go.

They drove slowly back in the direction of the motel, looking at the many abandoned buildings they had to choose from. Pulling off the road, they found a promising looking boarded-up hardware store that appeared to have some kind of barn or warehouse at the back.

They left Baby tucked in at the side of the store, away from the street, and dragged their supplies down an even brick pathway that led to the back building.

Dean gave it a quick sweep, gun in hand, before determining that it was perfect; almost completely empty, with the kind of concrete floor that would make the summoning a lot easier.

They worked together, side by side, perfectly in sync.

 

***

 

Sam wasn’t having the most successful afternoon. The Sheriff’s house had, unsurprisingly for a law enforcement officer, a rather decent security system. He’d managed to get in eventually, but the fact that the system had been set from the outside was a clue that August had left the house of his own free will, at some point or another.

The Sheriff appeared to be single, judging by the amount of dirty laundry and dishes that covered the otherwise well-decorated house. There was, however, a picture of him on the mantel with his arm around a woman. A funeral program was tucked under the edge of the frame. Noting it sadly, Sam hoped she hadn’t been one of the victims.

In the bedroom, Sam caught the only thing of note he’d stumbled on in the house. At the bottom of the closet was a large white bag made of thin plastic, with the name of a charity that recycled clothes printed on both sides. Clearly, August had been planning to make some donations. Sam eased the bag open, and frowned at the sea of yellow items within.

 _Why would he get rid of everything he had in this color, when it seems so weirdly popular around here?_ Sam mused. He’d still been wearing yellow cufflinks at the station. _Perhaps it wasn’t something he’d been brave enough to be public about, yet?_

Sam couldn’t help but wonder if there was a good reason for that.

Stepping back out into the small, but neat, front yard, Sam pulled out his phone. Dean’s last message indicated that he and Cas had found a good location for the summoning, and were about to begin. He fired off a quick text in return.

          || Sheriff's house a bust. Headed to his office.

 

***

 

Castiel unpackaged the leg of lamb they had purchased and squeezed the blood from it into a copper bowl. It dripped from the bone down into the container, a few spoonfuls at most, but enough. Satisfied, Castiel put the meat aside and used a bottle of water to rinse his hands off to the side.

Dean wrinkled his nose, shaking his head. “Magic. No matter what the origin, the ingredients always have to be gross,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

Castiel watched carefully as Dean finished chalking the four quadrants of their summoning circle on the concrete floor of the small warehouse. Dean’s Enochian writing had vastly improved over the past years, he noted with more than a little pride.

 

 

 

Nonetheless, he reached over to cover Dean’s hand with his own, guiding him through the last few loops of the letters on the final quadrant. He was startled that Dean let him do so without complaint. He was even more startled when, in one of Dean’s usual acts of slightly childish rebellion, he took the chalk and began to write something on the wall of the warehouse.

Stepping up behind Dean, looking over his shoulder, Castiel expected to see Dean drawing something crude or leaving an obscene comment. Instead, Castiel was surprised to see Dean forming another Enochian letter; looking like a backward number thirteen. The equivalent of the letter C was quickly followed by the rest of Castiel’s name.

“Dean,” Castiel said in surprise, staring at the chalk. “When did you learn that?’

“While you were...away.” Dean moistened his lips awkwardly. He never seemed to quite be able to say that Castiel had been _dead_ , that was too final, too painful, even now. “I couldn’t sleep,” he shrugged. “Taught myself, over a couple weeks.”

Castiel didn’t ask why Enochian was what he’d chosen to practice, or why he hadn’t been sleeping. Instead he reached up to still Dean’s hand, grinning slightly.

“You’ve done well Dean, but it’s not perfect yet. Better stop before you accidentally summon my brother Cassiel. He’s one of the guardians of heaven, and if he still lives he might be a little annoyed.”

Dean blinked, and hastily scrubbed out his doodle.

Castiel concealed his teasing smile, and turned back to the bowl in the middle of their chalk circle. After adding a good glug of holy oil from the jug that the Winchesters always carried in the back of the car, he deemed everything ready.

Dean came to stand beside him. For a moment it seemed that Dean was going to say something, but it passed, and instead he handed his zippo lighter to Castiel.

“Let’s rock and roll,” he commented. “Time for Sammael to prove his innocence… or not.”

Castiel nodded in agreement and crouched down to light the collection of herbs, blood and holy oil that sat on top of the Enochian sigils.

The flames leapt up immediately, higher than it looked like they should have, given the size of the bowl. Castiel handed the lighter back to Dean before focusing on the flames.

 _“Sammael, noasmi ol oiad,_ ” he intoned solemnly. “ _Oadriax gil ol goho ol_.”

Castiel had told Dean beforehand what he would say, so he knew that Castiel was only telling Sammael to come to them, and that they wanted to speak to him. Even knowing that, it still sounded like Castiel was struggling to cough up a fish bone, to Dean’s ears.

A tense minute passed.

Castiel thought that perhaps Sammael was ignoring him. He didn’t know his ancient brother that well. If he really was behind the killings, or didn’t recall Castiel, he may not come at all.

Then, with a cacophony of shattering glass, popping light bulbs and a rattling of the warehouse roof, the air changed.

Castiel rolled his eyes. _Come on,_ he thought. _No need for all the theatrics, brother._

Before them, in the middle of the circle, stood a very tall man—if he could be called a man—with a long black robe and hood. His face, paper-white and practically skeletal (though, Dean noted, not _actually_ a skull), tilted to the side to peer at them curiously. His eyes burned bright for a moment, until his gaze settled on Castiel.

“Brother,” he stated. When his eyes calmed, they were gray.

Something about him reminded Dean of Death, and he didn’t like it.

“Sammael,” Castiel inclined his head in a brief greeting, “I wasn’t sure if you would come.”  

The angel’s face, barely more than bone, broke into an attempt at a smile. “Why would I avoid my own family, Castiel? I may have been “out of the loop”, as it were, for a few thousand years, but we are still kin.”

“We are,” Castiel agreed, cautiously, his attention fixed unerringly on Sammael, cataloging his every move.

Dean began to speak, next to him. “This is a wonderful family reunion and all, but—”

Whatever Dean had been about to say was cut off by the crack of a baseball bat smacking across the back of his head.

Before Castiel could react, a solid bar of steel painted with crude Enochian letters smashed into to his temple.

Unconscious, they hit the floor in unison.


	5. The Silver Key

 

**~The Silver Key~**

Gaining entry to the police station was at least easier than getting into the Sheriff’s home had been. Sam strolled up to the desk, flashed his FBI badge to Maggie, and she waved him on through under the impression that he’d come to help find the Sheriff, as he was in the area. Not totally untrue, for once.

The Sheriff’s office looked exactly as it had when Sam had been in it two days prior. The desk had a few miscellaneous papers scattered about, but a quick perusal told him they were related to an exciting parking ticket case and not all that helpful.

The filing cabinets were well organized, alphabetized correctly and all labeled. Nonetheless, Sam flicked through each drawer just in case something stood out.

When he reached the bottom drawer of the furthest cabinet, he wrapped his fingers around the metal handle and pulled. Nothing. The drawer was locked.

Making a curious humming noise to himself, Sam crouched down to examine it. There was a tiny silver key-lock next to the handle, but the keyhole was empty.

Standing back up, he looked around. _If I were a Sheriff, where would I keep keys?_ he wondered.

_Maybe wherever the rest of them are._

Stepping back out into the hallway, he smiled politely at Maggie. “Excuse me. Is there somewhere in particular that August kept the keys - office keys, handcuff keys?”

“Oh, yes,” Maggie nodded helpfully. “They’re back here,” she gestured down to a combination safe under her own desk. “Gotta be kept separate from the cuffs, you see.”

“Of course,” Sam noted, moving toward her as she handed him a felt-lined tray from the safe with around a dozen keys laying on it.

Sam went straight for the only one without a clear label - a tiny silver key.

Thanking Maggie, he headed back to the filing cabinet. Turning the key, he was rewarded with a satisfying click as the cabinet popped open a quarter inch.

Pulling the drawer handle toward himself, he was rewarded with a bunch of files in heavy yellow file-folders.

 _Oh, they’re yellow? I thought they’d be blue,_ Sam thought sarcastically to himself.

He took all of the files out and placed them on the Sheriff’s desk, looking through them one by one.

Finally, it seemed like they were getting somewhere.

The files contained membership rosters for the Malkira Foundation, going back several years and stopping just less than two months ago. _Right after the “suicides” began,_ Sam noted.

There were also sheets of handwritten notes, meeting minutes, and “prayer lists”—which looked, to Sam’s trained eyes, very much like incantations.

The meeting minutes cataloged every discussion held by the Foundation members in a formal setting for the past year.

 _Jackpot,_ Sam grinned.

 

***

 

The rough cement of the warehouse floor grazed against the side of Dean’s face as he slowly came to. He felt like he’d been hit by a bus.

Or knocked out with a baseball bat.

“Cas?” As soon as his thoughts cleared, Dean raised one hand to his throbbing head and pushed himself off the floor, searching for the angel.

There was no response, and for a second he feared the warehouse was empty. Then he turned far enough to see the beige trench coat pooled on the floor behind him and dropped back to his knees with relief.

“Cas!” Dean reached out, shaking Cas’s shoulder. “Cas! Buddy, can you hear me? Cas?”

Letting go of his own throbbing head, Dean rolled Cas awkwardly onto his back. He was out cold, completely unresponsive to his calls.

“Cas?”

Dean saw an ugly, seeping blunt-trauma wound at Cas’s temple. Wincing at it, Dean quickly checked Cas for a heartbeat to quell his rising panic.

It was there. Faint, slower than Dean’s own, but as far as he recalled that was normal for a vessel.

 _Thank God. I couldn’t—_ Dean cut off the thought, not allowing it to go any further. _He’s fine. He’s gonna be fine._

Looking around, Dean quickly grabbed his scattered gun and the bowl from Sammael’s summoning, which had been tipped on its side. Shoving the few items that were salvageable into the duffel they’d brought them in, Dean zipped it up and moved back to Cas.

“Cas?”

Still nothing.

Worried, Dean gritted his teeth against the storm in his head and bent down, dragging and pulling at Cas’s dead weight until he had him settled in his arms. The bridal-style lift looked oddly dramatic with all the trench coat fabric flapping around. Picking up the duffle in his other hand, he began to move.

All he knew was that he needed to get out of there fast and call Sam. He had no idea how he was going to wake Cas up, or if he’d wake on his own.

Dean managed to wedge Cas into the passenger seat of the Impala. He was pulling out of the alley next to the hardware store when Cas’s head shifted slightly, and a small moan fell from his lips.

“Cas?” Dean reached over into his space immediately, his hand to the side of the angel’s face. “Can you hear me?”

Another moan, and then a small murmur came from him. Dean thought it might have been his name. It was enough for now. Relieved that Cas seemed to at least be starting to regain consciousness, Dean furrowed his brow against the pounding pain in his own head, squinted against his blurred vision, and floored the Impala back to the motel.

It only took a few minutes, but Dean was concerned that Cas hadn’t made any more noise by the time he moved around to open the door on his side, parked right outside their motel room. He’d preemptively opened the motel room door, but getting Cas inside was still going to be awkward.

Sliding one arm under Cas’s knees and scooping the other behind his shoulder blades, Dean hefted the bulk of the six-foot angel against his chest and carried him through the door of their room.

Lowering Cas to the bed, Dean raided the motel bathroom for a couple of clean towels, before digging through his duffle for the economy-sized bottle of medical alcohol they always carried.

“Alright buddy,” Dean comforted quietly, easing Cas’s feet out of his boots and pulling at his trench coat, then his suit jacket. “Let’s get you comfortable, and get that wound cleaned up.”

Cas was still wearing his dress shirt and slacks. Had it been anyone else, Dean would probably have stripped those off too. Instead, he settled on pulling the blanket up over him, tucking it around his chest with the clothes still on. Cas usually wore so many layers that he looked practically naked in just a long-sleeved white shirt and navy pants.

After soaking one of the hand towels in alcohol, Dean lifted Cas’s head with one hand and began to clean the side of his face. A groan came from Cas as Dean pressed the towel to his temple.

“Sorry Cas,” Dean murmured quietly. “Don’t know what caused this, can’t take any chances.”

The stinging of the alcohol seemed to bring Cas slowly back around. After a few minutes of gentle swabs, Cas’s endless blue eyes stuttered open. He squinted up at Dean and considered him for a few seconds, as if placing him.

“Dean.”

It was a statement of identification, rather than a question, but Dean didn’t really notice, relieved to hear his voice.

“Cas, man, you scared me a minute there. What’s it take to knock out an angel, anyway?”

Cas blinked slowly. “A spell,” he suggested. “Or a particularly big stick.”

Dean came forward with the alcohol-soaked towel again, and Cas’s eyes tracked his hand. Sucking in a breath against the sting, Cas began to push himself up in the bed, looking around and noticing his placement and the blanket around him.

“What happened?” he asked carefully.

“Dunno,” Dean responded sourly. “Whoever it was got me too. I’ve got some pretty hefty painkillers I can take, but I don’t know if there’s enough bottles in town to affect you.”

“Willing to try,” Cas muttered, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

After a quick trip to his bag, Dean pressed a bottle of oxycodone into Cas’s hand, muttering something about needing to fake up some more prescriptions when they got home. Heedless, Cas popped off the top and gulped down the contents, dry.

Dean grimaced but said nothing. Taking the empty bottle from him, he threw it into the trash.

A blast of music from Dean’s pocket announced that Sam was calling. He perched on the bed, next to Cas, to answer the call.

“Hey Sam,” he spoke quietly, his own voice causing his head to pulse angrily.

“Hey Dean, so get this—”

“Sam,” Dean interrupted. “Keep your voice down, okay? Cas and I got hit in the head.”

“What? Who by?”

“If we knew, don’t you think I would have opened with that?” Dean snapped, grumpy from pain.

“Sorry. So Sammael was a bust?”

“Yeah. If it is him, he’s got friends. Ones who like to sneak up from behind.”

“Ouch. Sorry guys. Are you gonna be okay?” Sam’s concern poured through the phone.

“Yeah. We might need a whole pharmacy for Cas, but it’s not like we haven’t had concussions before,” Dean reassured.

Sam launched into a recap of his investigation of the Sheriff's house and office, but Dean found it very difficult to pay attention.

Cas was leaning against him as he sat on the bed with his back against the headboard, lolling into Dean’s side familiarly. His face was tucked into Dean’s neck, with his eyes closed, and his wild, dark hair was tickling the side of Dean’s face.

_Uh._

Something in Dean’s brain kept short-circuiting and shutting his ears to whatever Sam was trying to tell him.

“Dean? Are you sure you’re okay? You’re really out of it, dude.”

“Uh,” Dean stammered. “Yeah. Concussion. What were you saying?”

“Look, you stay at the motel, okay? Try and stay awake, you know the drill,” Sam cautioned. “I’m going to go to the House and try to speak to Keziah Mason,” he explained. “These files appear to indicate that she gets the final say on who gets in—and out—of the Malkira Foundation.”

“You shouldn’t go alone, Sam,” Dean began, but even he knew there wasn’t much option.

“Your brain is scrambled, Dean. You’d be a liability, not a help. Stay at the motel and I’ll call you within the hour. Okay?”

Reluctantly, Dean agreed.

 

***

 

The room began to swim back into focus. No—wait. This was a different room. Castiel squinted.

_Where am I?_

He ached, in places he hadn’t felt in a long time. His vision was distorted—or was it?

_What is happening?_

As the throbbing pain in his mind dissipated under the throb of his grace, Castiel became aware that his body was missing.

It had only been a few years prior that he’d begun to think of it as “his body.” Before that it had been “his vessel,” but that hadn’t felt right once Jimmy Novak was in heaven and he was resurrected in this same form more than once.  

But now it was missing. He was light and freedom and weightlessness. And very small.

_What is going on?_

He remembered the warehouse, Dean next to him, Sammael in front. Sammael had looked...wrong. All of Cas’s attention had been on him, trying to work him out, and then suddenly—pain.

_Dean._

Where was Dean, now? Where was his vessel? Where was he? Castiel’s mind worked faster than any human’s, but it was still sluggish as he tried to come up with answers. Something was very wrong.

He was trapped. That much became clear quickly. He reached out, pushing forward and to the sides, turning and stretching behind. He was trapped, held between some kind of glass; something spelled, tempered with holy oil, etched with Enochian bindings.

He was in a prison. An angel prison.

Castiel’s eyes wandered upwards and around the cylindrical walls, and the indignity of it finally hit him.

_Not a prison. A jar. I’m in a jar, like a child’s pet insect or an ill-seasoned homemade pickle._

He bristled. Pickle. That’s what the vinegar smell was.

Once his mind calmed, he pressed up to the edge of the glass, pressing his face close to it as he floated ethereally in his jail. If he held his face close to the walls, he could avoid the distortion that the curve was irritating his eyes with. He could see beyond.

He was, as he had initially suspected, no longer in the warehouse.

The room the jar sat in was fairly bare. It had a wooden floor and a single window, shielded by a blackout curtain. The drape fit too well for him to be able to see what was beyond it. A small lamp, plugged into a socket but left on the floor next to it, provided the only light. The bulb was weak, and shadows spread heavily across the only two pieces of furniture; whatever his imprisoning jar sat upon (a bookshelf, Castiel assumed) and an empty chair, alone in the middle of the room.

The empty chair was concerning. Castiel knew enough of human horror movie tropes, and enough of monsters, to know that a single chair in the center of a room was worrisome.

For now, though, the chair was empty and he was alone.

He shouted for Dean, but nothing happened. He wasn’t even sure his true voice could leave the jar any better than he himself could. He was truly trapped.

So he waited. He thought of Sammael, how off his grace had felt. Like it wasn't grace at all. Like—suddenly, the realization arrived.

 _That wasn’t Sammael. It was something that looked like him. Something using him as a vessel._  

Perhaps the Malkira Foundation believed they were idolizing an angel. Perhaps once, they had been. But whether they knew it or not, what they were worshiping now was not Sammael, of that Castiel was sure.

Frustrated, Castiel threw his tiny, compressed form of light against the edge of the jar. It didn’t budge.

Angry, worried about Dean, concerned about the Malkira Foundation, and worrying about his vessel, Castiel slumped down to rest at the bottom of the jar.

All he could do was wait.

 

***

 

Sam straightened out his tie and dusted down his suit jacket, trying his best to look put together before he rang the doorbell of the Malkira Foundation’s tall, many-floored house.

While he was still raising his hand to press the button, the door opened.

On the other side stood a petite, curly-haired woman with gray eyes, her eyebrow raised in amusement. She smiled, but there wasn’t much warmth in it.

“Hello, uh,” thrown momentarily, Sam scrambled for his badge. “I’m Agent Phillips, with—”

“The FBI, yes, I know,” the woman’s voice was deeper than Sam expected from her delicate form. “I’m Keziah Mason. I assume you came to see me about the deaths you’re following up on?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam nodded politely, reaching surreptitiously back behind himself to check on his gun in his waistband. “Just a few questions to verify what others have said, if you don’t mind, and I’ll be on my way.”

She regarded him for a moment, then nodded. She stepped aside, opening the door wide.

“Welcome to the Malkira Foundation,” she greeted as he entered, clicking the door shut behind him.

“This is a nice building,” Sam said conversationally, moving to the side so that Keziah could pass him and lead the way into the house. “Much nicer than anything else in town.”

Keziah nodded. “Yes. The town rots, but Sammael protects us.”

Sam blinked. He hadn’t expected that coming around to this subject would be so easy.

“Sammael...the angel of death. So you aren’t the Foundation of Malkira,” he noted, calmly. “You’re the Cult of Malkira.”

Gesturing for Sam to walk into a side room, set up like a parlor or waiting room, Keziah nodded. “Yes, you’d call us that, I’m sure.”

Sam’s nerves were frayed, but the door was shut behind him and he calculated that his best course was to play along. The woman was tiny and appeared to be alone in the house; she wouldn’t be much of a threat, he hoped.

So he stepped into the parlor and took one of the offered seats.

“So… a little older than 1937, then,” he smiled nervously, reaching back to check his gun once more.  

“Oh, yes,” Keziah smirked, moving to sit opposite him. There was a little coffee table between them, covered with pamphlets. They seemed to be from various charities and missions, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and safe spaces. “This house was originally erected in 1937. The Malkira have been in existence since the first whisperings of Abrahamic religions on earth.”

Sam drummed his fingers uncomfortably on the arms of the chair. “And have they always killed people?” he asked boldly.

A shadow passed Keziah’s face. “Those people weren’t killed, Agent Phillips, if that’s really your name. They chose to end their own suffering, gift their soul to Sammael.”

“So the cult brainwashed them into killing themselves. Drove them mad.”

“No,” Keziah’s smile was surprisingly patient, and her look was almost pitying as she leaned forward toward Sam, eager. “They were blessed. They saw the true form of our angel.”

Sam frowned, before leaning forward in a mirror of the woman’s almost conspiratorial position. “Well, Ms. Mason, you see—I know what happens when someone looks upon the true form of an angel. I’ve been witness to it myself. Their eyes are burnt out, the screaming is horrible, and they never really recover—and that’s if they live at all.”

Keziah’s eyebrows lowered angrily. “What are you saying?”

“That Sammael is no angel.”

Keziah’s expression twisted, her lip curling back and her gray eyes darkening further. “Don’t speak such blasphemy in this house. August did that, and he will be punished. I know you have been here, Agent. I saw you and your partner, you know—trespassing in the chapel, stealing our things.”

Sam blinked. She’d said August “will be punished.” _That means the Sheriff is still alive,_ he realized. _And that he did want off this crazy train._

“It sounds like August was right,” Sam responded. “If Sammael is killing people, driving people mad—he’s not someone to be worshipped, Keziah.”

“Perhaps angels aren’t what you think, but I have seen his miracles. I have felt his blessings!” She intoned, her voice filled with a terrifying level of passion.

Sam felt a cold chill spread through his bones. This woman was crazy. She really believed she was doing the work of Sammael, the angel of death.

“Let me tell you something about angels, Keziah,” Sam’s voice came out harshly. “With only a couple of notable exceptions—they don’t give a shit about you. They also don’t appreciate idol worship. In ancient times it became common, and God punished man for it. He punished angels for it too, from what I’ve been told.”

Sam suddenly found that his hands had formed fists, but Keziah didn’t interrupt him and so he continued.

“Whoever you think you’re worshipping? That’s no angel. At best, he’s as fallen and blasphemous as you are, at worst—” Sam caught himself, realizing he was shouting. “At worst he’s a monster. A demon, a witch, something you can’t comprehend.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed darkly and she began to rise from her chair. “Heathen!”

Sam gawped, but felt a chuckle rising in his throat. “You think I’m a heathen? Oh boy,” he found himself laughing openly. “You just wait until Cas hears this.”

His hand moved around to his back, going for his handgun as the woman rose.

“You speak against Sammael in front of his most favored!” Keziah roared. “He has given me blessings you can’t even conceive of!”

Sam raised his hand, hoping to intimidate the woman with the threat of a barrel.

With one blink, his whole view changed.

His view of Keziah Mason, his view of the case, his view of the whole damn world.

The Malkira Cult leader stood in front of him still, she hadn’t even moved. But the light around her adjusted, almost as if she was coming into focus for the first time.

Sam stared.

Her skin had a sickly, purplish palor and her gray eyes were now yellow. A vivid, throbbing yellow that covered the entire eyeball.

Those things didn’t worry him as much as the tentacles that filled the space where her arms should be. On the undersides, there were muted yellow suckers attached to the slick, purplish flesh. They writhed unnaturally in the air, undulating and shining with a slightly yellowish secretion. Long. Thick. Moist.

One wrapped around his gun.

The gun was gone from his hand and he was on the floor, soundless, amazed, as the second tentacle clobbered him around the head.

 _No wonder they all went mad,_ Sam thought, before darkness took him.

 

***

 

Dean and Cas didn’t really talk while they rested, waiting for Sam.

They swallowed down painkillers (a normal amount for Dean, and for Cas the remnants of every bottle Dean could find in his and Sam’s bags) then turned on the TV, watching with the sound off to try and keep themselves awake.

Dean wasn’t paying much attention to the TV, with its wordless Spanish telenovela. Nor was he having any trouble staying awake.

Cas’s weight was hot and heavy at his side, leaning into him familiarly without having said anything about it. In fact, if Dean just lifted his arm around, they’d almost be—-

 _No,_ Dean thought. _He’s just being Cas. Awkward, weird Cas. He’s not trying to snuggle._

Nonetheless, as the TV show wore on and Cas didn’t withdraw or show any sign of embarrassment, Dean settled into the feeling. It was pleasant. A little taste of the domesticity he thought he’d never get.

When Cas groaned slightly, raising a hand to his head, Dean looked down at him.

“Not feeling any better?” he whispered, in part to keep his volume down and in part not to break the moment.

“A little,” Cas conceded, “but when I move there are lights around my eyes. Human bodies are so...fragile,” he grumbled.

“What did they hit you with that actually managed to hurt you, do you think?” Dean tried for nonchalance, but he knew what came out was squeaky concern.

Cas’s deep blue eyes rolled up to Dean’s face, his cheek still pressed into his shoulder. He regarded him for a second, studying his unease, then smiled.

The smile was soft, affectionate. Mindblowing, for Dean.

“I don’t know what hit me. Something spelled, I’m sure. But I’m going to be okay, Dean. Don’t worry,” Cas reassured gently.

Cas raised an arm, laying it over Dean’s stomach, and turned his attention back to the TV.

Dean’s heart rate ratcheted up another notch. This was _definitely_ snuggling. Moistening his lips nervously, he jostled Cas just a little as he raised his arm, wrapping it around Cas’s shoulders. He didn’t pull him in, but Cas responded automatically, rolling slightly so that he was pressed fully into Dean’s side.

Cas didn’t say a word. As if this was the most normal thing. As if they always did this.

Dean’s heart pounded.

He sat very still, committing every sensation of their unexplained cuddle to memory, in case it never happened again.

Dean didn’t push, didn’t even mention it. Cas had a concussion; he might not even mean this. He might not even want it. So Dean stayed still, and other than the arm across Cas’s shoulders, carefully kept his hands to himself and focused on breathing.

Another ten minutes or so passed, and Dean found himself almost reluctant to reach for his phone. But he had to check on Sam.

Tucking the phone into his shoulder, he left his arm around Cas.

“No answer,” Dean muttered.

“Sam?” Cas questioned.

“Yeah. He’s not picking up his phone and it’s been an hour. Something’s wrong.”

Cas hesitated, which Dean found odd. But again, they were both concussed. Who was he to say what was odd.

“We should probably look for him,” Cas suggested.

“Yeah, of course.” Dean began to sit up. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

His side felt cold as he stood up.


	6. The Unnamable

 

 

**~The Unnamable~**

Cas watched from his jar as a petite brunette woman opened the door of the room. Behind her came a very tall, joyous looking man, who hummed as he dragged someone by his feet.

Pressed up against the glass, Cas squinted out to see what was happening.

“Tie him to the chair, Flagg,” the woman cooed happily. “He can stay here with the other friend Sammael brought us,” her eyes flicked briefly towards Cas, “until the prayer meeting tomorrow.”

 _Prayer meeting?_ Cas frowned. _They really think it’s Sammael they are devoted to. Do they really think an angel would ask them to do such things?_

His mind was briefly drawn back to a time when angels had done horrific things, to each other and to many he knew on earth. Maybe these people weren’t so far off. But that creature, he was convinced, was not Sammael.

The tall man, Flagg, pulled the prone form he dragged behind him further into the room.

Cas’s stomach lurched when he saw that it was Sam.

They had him, they had Sam, where was Dean? Was he safe? Panic rose in Cas’s chest.

The woman was heading over toward his jar, squinting at him through the glass. Not that she could see him, he mused; the jar probably appeared to be filled with white smoke, or grace-like light, to her. His true form in its natural state would never fit in a jar.

 _What magic is this?_ He mused, pressing against the glass sides again as the woman regarded him. _It’s powerful. But unknown._

“What did he tell you, Flagg? When he joined your mind? What did he say about this one?” she asked, pointing at the jar. “What are we supposed to do with him?”

Flagg turned, after securely tying Sam to the chair with zip-ties, and gave the woman a haughty, disparaging look. “If Sammael doesn’t choose to speak to you directly, perhaps you aren’t worthy of the words, Keziah,” he said.

Her eyes flashed angrily, and she turned from looking at Cas to focus on Flagg. “Just because he sometimes uses your face, before this,” Keziah gestured vaguely at Cas, “doesn’t make you superior. Remember who is the leader here, _Randall_.” She drew out the word, as if mocking him by using the less familiar name.

 _Randall Flagg,_ Cas thought. _Of course. The bar owner that Sam and Dean interviewed._

“You, of course,” Flagg sneered, almost mockingly. “Perhaps he instructed me to go to the warehouse and knock them out for a reason. He wanted to take the other angel from his vessel so that he could play with the human, but maybe he had me do it,” the man jabbed his own chest with a bony finger, “because you failed him with August and Brad. Let things slip. Maybe you aren’t the favorite anymore, Keziah,” he smirked.

Cas vaguely followed the odd argument, picking out only what was relevant to him. Someone, Sammael or another, had told Flagg to come and attack him and Dean. They wanted Cas out of his vessel and Dean—played with? What did that mean? Was Dean going to be the next one to go mad and turn up in the Miskatonic River?

 _Why did they want me out of my vessel?_ Cas wondered, though the answer hit him immediately. _They’re going to use it. A seraph vessel is strong. They’re walking around as me, with Dean…. they’re…._ He didn’t want to connect that to the rest of the comments about “playing” with Dean.

Shoving down the fear, Cas focused again on Sam. He appeared to be alive, so he could be grateful for that at least. But he’d been knocked out by something; Cas could see the bloom of a blunt-force bruise already reddening against the side of Sam’s face.

Keziah and Flagg bickered on, departing without a  backward glance as they locked the door behind them.

After a few minutes, Sam’s head began to move. With a groan through the rough fabric gag they had tied around his mouth, he opened his eyes. He blinked several times, looking around the room slowly. Cas knew he was taking everything in, plotting his chances of escape. This kind of situation was hardly a first for a Winchester.

Sam’s eyes stopped to rest on Cas’s jar, looking at it curiously.

“Sam!” Cas called desperately. He was unsure if it was wise to speak too much. Without a vessel, his true voice could injure Sam. His voice echoed back at him around the inside of the jar, however, and he realized that wasn’t going to be a concern. The magic surrounding him was strong, and Sam couldn’t hear a thing.

One thing gave Cas a little hope, though. Keziah and Flagg had captured Sam. There was only one thing that equated to in Cas’s mind.

If Sam was in danger, Dean would find him.

 

***

 

Dean was trying not to dwell on the snuggling in the hotel room, passing it off as a quirk of Cas’s concussion. He really was trying. The fact he kept staring at Cas’s hands as he flicked through one of the books they’d taken from the temple really meant nothing.

Not that he didn’t want it; the point where his desires for Cas had turned from something purely lust-filled to something more, something domestic and warm and wanting, had passed years ago. He’d hidden it well. Or, well enough.

But he wouldn’t let his heart be broken by something Cas didn’t, couldn’t possibly, mean.

Shaking his still aching head, Dean tried to focus on parking straight as he pulled the Impala up outside the Foundation house once more. He parked behind Cas’s Continental that Sam had driven; Sam was definitely here. Or had been.

Dean stumbled in a moment of dizziness as he walked around the car to mount the curb. His stomach filled with butterflies as Cas reached out to touch at his back; a simple, steadying motion. But the hand didn’t leave, and by the time Cas spoke, his arm has slipped around Dean’s waist.

“Careful, Dean. Neither of us is in a fit state to be doing this.”

Focusing on what he knew he could answer, rather than the warm arm around his waist, Dean pursed his lips. “You’re not wrong. But I’m not leaving him here.”

Cas was silent.

They took an assortment of weapons from the trunk of the Impala, heedless as to what any nosy neighbors on the otherwise residential street would think. If they peered out and saw two staggering men with shotguns and blades tottering toward the Malkira Foundation building, Dean would have happily placed a wager that it wouldn't have cracked the top ten list of oddest things they’d seen around this building.

Instead of knocking, because he wasn’t that stupid even with a concussion, Dean led Cas around to the back of the House.

“When we came the other night, we got in through the basement,” Dean whispered as they lurched hip-to-hip up the side passageway, leaning on each other. “There was a door leading straight down into that perverted chapel space.”

Cas eyed him oddly from the side, but still said nothing.

Dean paused outside the same basement door they had used prior. The broken lock had been replaced with thick chains. Freezing and crouching down, he listened.

There were muffled voices within. Male and female, he couldn’t make out more than that.

Gesturing Cas to follow, Dean used the wall to support himself when necessary and headed further along the passageway, around the back of the building.

At the back of the Malkira Foundation’s meeting place there was a locked door which, upon peeking through the glass, led to an empty kitchen. Signaling silently for Cas to keep watch, Dean crouched and leaned his weight against the doorframe. He pulled his lock-picking kit out of his pocket, and set to work.

It only took a couple of minutes, during which they were thankfully undisturbed.

The kitchen was small, but neat and clean. It didn’t look much used, with no real appliances beyond a coffee maker and refrigerator. Dean surmised it was used for snacks for events and keeping the members of the foundation awake during the long committee meetings it seemed Sam had found the records of.

Dean tip-toed through it with Cas hot on his heels.

It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to locate Sam. There were only five doors on the first floor: a kitchen, a waiting room, a large meeting room with a table and chairs, one that Dean worked out led down to the basement, and a locked mystery room.

Cas watched again as they approached the mystery room, Dean got the lockpick back out, and there was Sam.

“Dean!” Sam whispered, as soon as the clicking of the door lock stopped and it swung open. His grin was wide and happy, despite the purpling bruise coming out across the side of his temple.

Dean grimaced, pointing at it as he made his way over. “Looks like we all got cracked in the noodle today, huh.”

Sam nodded slowly as Dean pulled out a pocket knife to Deal with the zip-ties. Cas waited at the door, watching the hallway.

A few moments of quiet sawing and Sam’s wrists and ankles were free once more. He swayed slightly as he stood, but stayed upright. He dismissed Dean’s concerned look with one hand.

“I’m fine. Just a little woozy. No worse than you two, I’m sure.”

Dean nodded and reached to support Sam as they turned toward the door.

“Wait,” said Sam, craning his neck back behind them. He stopped and let go of Dean, moving across to a simple oak bookcase that took up the far wall, slightly unsteady but determined. He reached onto an eye level shelf, and grabbed a dirty looking jar.

The jar glowed.

Dean peered at it, and reached to take it from him.

“I think it’s grace,” Sam hissed quietly. “Possibly Sammael’s—the real Sammael, if the one you met isn’t him.”

Dean lifted the jar up to his face and frowned slightly as he looked at the swirling whiteness within. It seemed to move, throbbing against the glass in his direction. Something about the jar felt strangely familiar.

Slowly, he nodded to Sam as they began to move out of the room. “Yeah. I guess it must be grace...it feels kinda familiar.  Kinda like Cas, I guess? So that makes sense that it’s grace.”

Cas waited for them in the doorway, watching them with a puzzled expression. “Grace?” he questioned, looking at Sam straight on, perfectly immobile. His eyes dropped to the jar Dean held. “Oh…” he murmured, staring at it.

For a moment Cas smiled oddly, and parted his lips—If he was going to ask a question though, it was lost in the clatter of footsteps coming from behind the basement door.

The next few seconds were a bit of a blur as Keziah Mason and Randall Flagg burst into the hallway.

“Dean!” Sam yelled immediately, using a pointing finger to direct Dean toward Keziah, as his gun was gone “Her! She’s not human!”

Dean’s gun rose at the same time as both of the cult members transformed.

Later, Dean and Sam would look back and say that there was no transformation, as such. That they merely shifted from seeing one reality to another. No matter what it was that happened, the corridor suddenly erupted with oozing tentacles, and the result was the same: Dean’s gun rang out twice, and then as Keziah and Flagg stumbled, twice more.

Whatever they were, Dean had no name for them. But they obviously weren’t human, and that was good enough for him. He emptied the rest of his magazine at them. Just in case.

The smell that hit Sam, Dean, and Cas as the two tentacled forms bled yellow across the floor was horrific. A stomach-churning stench of rot and deadness, the smell only confirmed Sam’s suspicion that the cult members, as humans, were gone long ago.

Shoving the grace-jar into Sam’s hands, Dean moved cautiously down the hallway toward the bodies, gun still raised. He covered his nose and mouth with the back of his free arm, using the fabric of his plaid shirt to dull the fetid odor.

Dean cautiously nudged one of the tentacles, ostensibly Randall Flagg’s left arm, with his boot. It flopped over with a sickening squelch, leaving a smear of yellowish gunk on the dark wood floor.

Dean gagged.

From back behind him, Sam called, “Dean, let’s get out of here. Before I throw up.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, his own stomach churning dangerously.

He decided to take the simple route and kicked open the front door, so they could all tumble out into the much fresher evening air.

They headed straight back to the motel.

When they got to their room, Sam put the grace-jar down on the nightstand and exhaled heavily. “Well that was…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“Yeah.” Dean agreed. About to say something else, he was cut off when the lamp on the nightstand next to him emitted a loud popping noise. The bulb had blown. Scowling at it, he reached over to turn on the overhead light, so that he could see to loosen his bootlaces.

“Something still isn’t adding up,” Sam mused, looking askance at the lamp before shrugging.

Dean nodded along, ditching his plaid to leave only his undershirt. “I feel like we’re missing a piece. What’s up with Sammael, or not Sammael, whatever he is? And where were the rest of the Stepford tentacles, assuming the whole cult is into a lot more than angel-worship?”

A round of nods followed.

“You should rest now,” Cas suggested quietly, moving to double-check the door locks. “It’s been a long day.”

Sam agreed. “It has. I usually get up earlier than you,” he directed his comment to Dean, “so once I wake in the morning I’ll head back to the house and burn those bodies. Search the house more thoroughly now Keziah is gone.”

Dean flopped sideways onto the other bed, still in his jeans but too tired to care. “I’ll head into town then, when I wake up. Keep looking for Sheriff Dereleth.”

The last part of his sentence was mumbled into the pillow.

Sam clicked off the light, stepping around Cas as he still stood near the doorway. “Night guys,” he mumbled. By the time his aching head hit the pillow, he was asleep.

Dean wasn’t far behind, his eyes heavy as exhaustion pulled at him. They snapped back open wide as he felt the mattress depress behind him.

Turning his head, he saw Cas climbing into the bed next to him.

Dean blinked, frozen.

“Goodnight, Dean,” Cas smiled easily, and leaned forward, pressing a chaste goodnight kiss to Dean’s cheek.

“Uh, N-night, Cas,” Dean managed to force out, his brain failing to provide anything else.

He fell asleep much later, his fingers still resting on his cheek in astonishment where Cas’s lips had brushed him.


	7. He

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is tagged for dubious consent. If you would like a spoiler to help you decide if you would like to read it or skip over it, please just use the link below to skip to the end, where I'll explain briefly what happens.

**~He~**

The previous night’s escapades had made Castiel feel a little motion sick; he hoped that this morning would involve less movement.

He hadn’t known such a thing was possible for him; he’d spent millennia flying and the Impala didn’t make him feel this way. But Sam’s lurching, uneven strides had. The Winchesters weren’t taking very good care of his jar.  _ But then, why would they? _ He reasoned.  _ They think this jar is just filled with grace...Sammael’s grace, at that.  _

He wished they could hear him scream out at them.  _ It’s me, it’s me! It’s not just grace, I’m in here! It’s an angel prison! Help!  _ He’d tried, of course. He’d screamed until he was hoarse. All he’d achieved was making Dean jump when the light bulb on the desk lamp popped.

He wished Dean had carried his jar to the motel. He probably wouldn’t have taken any better care of it than Sam, but at least he’d have been closer to the floor. 

And now, on top of the motion sickness and the indignity of having his true form squeezed into a filthy, spelled jar that still smelled vaguely of pickles, he had a front-row seat to the antics of the  _ thing _ walking around in his vessel. 

The thing—whatever had taken Sammael and bamboozled his followers—was touching Dean. His Dean. He was touching him in a way Castiel had never been brave enough to touch him. 

Castiel was  _ furious. _

Sam had woken and left early. Castiel had heard him take a shower before he headed out to the parking lot. He’d heard a couple of different car trunks slamming, and he pictured Sam transferring body-disposal supplies from Baby’s stock into the back of his gold Continental.

Sam felt safe to leave Dean, Castiel realized. He thought Castiel was watching over him.

Once Sam had gone, leaving a note for Dean on the nightstand that Castiel was at the wrong angle to read, the room had fallen quiet again. Dean was deeply asleep, his mouth open just slightly and one hand resting on his own cheek, where it had been all night. The Not-Castiel creature lay next to him, watching. 

Occasionally the Not-Castiel would turn his eyes toward the jar and look at Castiel for a moment, his mouth pulling into a cruel smile that looked out of place on Castiel’s features.

Castiel didn’t understand what was going on, and that frustrated him more than anything. He knew, from the obvious evidence, that the now-deceased Randall Flagg had snuck up on Dean and himself in the warehouse. He’d knocked them both out, Castiel suspected with some kind of spelled weapon, and had then ripped Castiel’s form from his vessel. That part confused him. It would take inordinately powerful magic to do such a thing. Not to mention this prison—a trap for an angel, fashioned from a mere pickle jar?

Clearly, they weren’t dealing with just a witch, and Castiels was still convinced they were not dealing with an angel, either. Sammael, he was certain, was long dead. His form on this earth had been usurped by whatever was now walking around as Castiel.

Castiel watched the creature intently as it shifted slightly in the motel bed.  _ What are you? And why are you doing this? _

Whenever Not-Castiel looked at him, he felt a deep, hollow void. There was simply nothing, beyond those eyes. It made him afraid, not for himself, but for Dean; curled up innocently asleep, sharing a bed with who-knew-what.

It looked up at him again. The gaze was longer this time, fixed and pointed. Not-Castiel’s blue eyes moved from the jar back down to Dean, before rising again and repeating the movement.

_ It wants me to watch,  _ Castiel realized with dawning horror.  _ Whatever he’s doing… my watching is part of its plan. _

“Dean!” Castiel screamed out, but his voice merely bounced back at him inside the glass walls. Dean didn’t stir.

Not-Castiel dropped his gaze back to Dean on the bed, and Castiel realized with a sickening sensation that it was moving in closer, wrapping an arm over Dean in sleep and pulling him across the bed. 

The inches between the two of them disappeared, and Not-Castiel was spooning Dean to him, pulled against his chest as he murmured words Castiel couldn’t hear into the crook of Dean’s neck.

The scene should have been lovely, romantic, soft. Instead, to Castiel’s eyes, it was a gross parody. To see Dean’s body react in sleep, leaning back into Not-Castiel and nuzzling into him tiredly...It hurt more than he could explain. Castiel was hyper focused on the bed, slamming himself bodily against the sides of the jar. 

“Dean!” Castiel tried crying out, screaming his name over and over, “Dean! Please! Listen!”

Pressed up against the sides of his prison, Castiel wailed. “Dean! That's not me…”

Eventually, tired, broken, hollow, Castiel gave up. He slithered down to huddle against the glass, sobbing and murmuring softly. “That's not me, Dean… it's not me.”

 

***

 

Dean woke as the little spoon. It wasn’t an immediate realization. At first, he felt a long stretch of warmth against his back and he pressed back into it automatically, contentedly absorbing the presence of another person. 

He’d dreamed unpleasantly, constant small nightmares of confined spaces and Cas’s disembodied voice, crying for help. They lingered for a moment after he woke, but he didn’t think the dreams were what broke his sleep. 

It was that presence of another person, that woke him. Because there shouldn’t have been another person, should there?

His eyes snapped open fully then, and he froze. There was an arm around his stomach, pulling him quite gently into the body that took up the other half of the bed. There were lips at his neck, murmuring something he couldn’t hear into his skin.

Dean rolled slowly to the side, blinking up at Cas’s endless blue eyes that reflected the remaining, unbroken night lamp in the room. 

“Cas?” Dean blinked again, clearing his vision. 

“Good morning, Dean,” Cas answered, close to his ear. Closer than he’d ever been.

Dean didn’t know how to react. His body was already reacting, not needing permission from his confused mind for this to make sense. Before he’d managed to form any words or adjust to…whatever this was, Cas’s hand came up to his face.

Cas’s fingers rested against his temple and his palm against Dean’s cheek. 

“How are you feeling, Dean? I’m somewhat rested now, I could…” Cas trailed off, tapping his fingers against Dean’s face very softly. It was a simple gesture, indicating that he could heal Dean’s concussion if he wanted, but somehow it felt very intimate, this close.

“I, uh,” Dean's voice was husky from sleep.”I think I’m good now, thanks. Doesn’t hurt,” he responded, smiling somewhat nervously as Cas’s face hovered so close to his own.

Cas’s hand didn’t leave his skin. The fingers trailed down to neck level and rested there with a familiar air, even though they’d never done this before. 

Dean lay on his back now, head on the lumpy motel pillow. Cas rested on his side next to him, pressed up against Dean’s ribs and sharing his space. There was a whole half of the bed beyond Cas, unoccupied. Cas was definitely more interested in sharing his side.

Dean was acutely aware that his eyes kept flicking to Cas’s lips, but he couldn’t seem to stop it.

Cas’s knee eased over the top of Dean’s. He was still lying next to him, but crowding gently into the gap between Dean’s legs. The fingers that had moved to Dean’s neck made it to his collar bone, and stayed there, drifting softly across his skin, back and forth.

“Uh, Cas…” Dean managed to choke out after a second, forcing through the huge part of him that just wanted to lay there and not say anything. 

_ Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth Dean, Jesus,  _  he thought, despite himself. 

“Yes, Dean?” The words came back from Cas after a warm, lazy pause, in which somehow Cas’s face had come even closer. His lips rested against Dean’s jaw, barely touching, like they were waiting for something.

“Are you, uh, feeling okay, buddy? Your head and stuff?” Dean forced out.

He felt Cas’s smile against his skin.

“I feel wonderful,” he responded. “And my concussion is gone too.”

Dean’s breath caught as he felt Cas’s lips finally connect with his face. They danced up from his jawline towards his lips and he closed his eyes, trying to memorize the sensation.

“Cas?” he tried again. 

“Yes, Dean?” the gently teasing response came from slightly above him now, as Cas leaned over to angle himself above Dean, his lips tantalizingly close to Dean’s own.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked breathlessly, both proud of himself for asking and hating himself at the same time.

When he opened his eyes to look at the messy-haired angel, undressed down to his white shirt and poised breathtakingly close, Dean found himself mesmerized. Cas’s smile was wide, toothy, showing those slightly wolfish incisors he loved so much. His eyes, though—the blue was dark, hungry and direct, and Dean was instantly lost in them.

“W-what are you doing?” Dean managed again, helplessly.

“Seducing you,” came Cas’s direct reply, breathed out before the kiss that stole all of Dean’s worries. 

 

***

 

The Malkira Foundation building was exactly as Sam, Dean, and Cas had left it the evening before. It didn’t look like anyone had been there at all, so Sam took the time to give the house a more thorough investigation, now that he wasn’t tied to a chair. 

The strange, high house was painted a lackluster gray which camouflaged it surprisingly well amongst Dunwich’s almost constant fog. It was simple from the outside; if it hadn’t been for the yellow painted sign at the entrance, it would have been completely unassuming.

It had four floors and a basement, and Sam took the time to methodically comb through them all. 

The top floor was storage, dusty and mostly unused. The stored items seemed to back-up the Malkira Foundation’s claims to philanthropy: toothpaste and winter scarves to make kits for the homeless, bookbags and pencils for low-income schools, canned goods and feminine supplies for shelters. But everything was covered in a thick, heavy layer of dust and many things were out of date. Clearly, that part of the Foundation had been neglected for some time.

Meeting rooms and business space seemed to occupy the two middle floors. The desks were uninteresting on the whole, full of dusty notes on donation drives and flyers for bake sales. Again, nothing had been touched in months.

The first floor’s main attraction was the hideous smelling, bloated and tentacled bodies. Sam had hoped that perhaps Keziah and Flagg would look human again, that some kind of magic would have worn off after death—but there didn’t seem to be any hope of that now, as the thick, sucker-covered appendages still covered most of the floor. 

Deciding to come back to them, Sam headed down to the strange chapel in the basement.

It didn’t seem to have changed since Sam and Dean had first broken in, but now that he didn’t have to be silent, Sam could make a more thorough check of it. 

He approached the huge statue of Sammael that occupied one side of the room, eyeing the splatters that covered the angel’s robes. They were definitely blood, Sam had been a hunter long enough to know. 

_ Did they sacrifice to Sammael?   _ He wondered. It seemed obscene, blood sacrifice in the name of an angel, but by now Sam completely agreed with Cas that they didn’t worship anything godly. The sad part, Sam mused, was that they obviously thought they did.

Sam stood for a moment, looking up at the smooth skull that served as Sammael’s face on the statue. 

Sam’s research into the angel had told him that Sammael had been worshipped heavily in Israel, back before the modern prevalent religions of the region. He was the angel of death, carrying spirits to Heaven or Hell. That matched up with what Cas had said about him being the first reaper.

As Sam studied the statue, he noticed that one of the dark eye sockets of the skull was blacker than the other. 

He pushed over one of the wooden pews, causing it to scrape deafeningly against the floor as he positioned it in front of the huge idol. Once he had it in place, he hopped up.

He took a deep breath before he stuck his fingers into the hole, as if something was going to grab his hand or jump out—but no such thing happened. Instead, the tip of his forefinger brushed something, an object that had been firmly shoved back into the depths of the eye socket. With a couple of tugs, it came free.

Stepping down, he let the item tumble into his palm.

It was a heavy, solid gold amulet. One side as completely covered in tiny engravings in a language that Sam didn’t know, and yet tugged at his mind familiarly. The other side had a bold, raised sigil. It looked like a slightly curved, uneven star—as if the arms were tentacles—with a stylized eye in the center. Even human as he was, Sam could sense the raw, dark power that the amulet held.

The circular, gold ornament had been tied with a red string, forming a pentacle shape over the top of the sigil. 

Sam knew enough of magic to sense that the thread wrapped around the piece was a binding spell of some sort.

_ The important question, _ he thought, _ is what is being bound—is this amulet protecting Sammael from something, or is it being protected from Sammael? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dub-Con: In this Chapter Nyarlathotep uses Cas's vessel to seduce Dean. Cas is aware of what's happening and can see that Dean's consent is given. Cas though, not being in control of his body, is not able to explicitly give consent. However, Nyarlathotep is using Cas's own desires to manipulate Dean, and taking the scenario from Cas's own mind, so as you will see later - Cas has no objection beyond the fact that he "missed out".


	8. Nyarlathotep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW and the dub-con warning continues for the first half of this chapter.

**~Nyarlathotep~**

Dean was floating. He couldn’t quite believe that this was happening. In a tiny motel room in the most depressing, creepy town in New England, Cas had decided to make a move. 

It wasn’t that Dean hadn’t wanted to. He’d wanted it more than anything, for years. But Cas was an angel. An enigma. He left all the time, he didn’t show his emotions easily, he didn’t understand so many things about being human. There were a million reasons not to.

But now, after all this time, Cas had made the decision for him.

They lay tangled on the bed, Cas over Dean, their kisses far across the line into feverish making-out. Dean’s hands were in Cas’s hair and Cas’s roamed Dean’s body, moving under his shirt and pushing insistently at the waistband of the jeans Dean was now shedding. 

He lifted his hips for Cas to push them off, his own hands slipping almost reluctantly out of Cas’s hair so that they could make short work of his shirt buttons.

Dean was breathless, groaning in gasps into the chill motel air as Cas divested him of his t-shirt and kissed a fiery path down his sternum to his bellybutton. 

“Cas…” he moaned out as the angel’s teeth grazed at his hip bone, fingers already working under the elastic of his boxer briefs. 

Cas paused for a moment, his hot breath leaving Dean’s abdomen and coming up to his palm as Cas caught one of his hands, kissing into it. “Dean?”

“Do you, uh,” Dean panted, trying to get his breathing under control enough for speech. “Is this, does it mean— I mean I’m okay if it’s—” he stumbled over his words, losing them in a deep moan as Cas dropped his hand and returned his attention to Dean’s body.

Through the fabric of his underwear, Cas mouthed expertly at his cock.

“Shit, Cas…” Dean tumbled back into groaning. “Where did you—” 

Dean lost the words again, his mouth falling open as Cas pushed up off the bed, kicking off his own white boxers without any hint of deliberation. Dean’s eyes widened as Cas’s length bobbed eagerly in front of him, and he couldn’t help but stare.

Cas sat back on his heels, watching Dean hungrily. His hand came to his own dick, rubbing at it firmly, his gaze devouring Dean’s body as he stroked out his pleasure.

Cas was naked from the waist down, but his white shirt was still buttoned at the cuffs. It hung off his shoulders, revealing every inch of tanned, muscled body beneath. His tie barely clung on. Looped and loose, it hung to one side over his open shirt. Cas looked utterly debauched.

Dean didn't think he'd ever seen a more beautiful sight.

Using his other hand, Cas tugged Dean’s underwear down and smiled up at him wolfishly before bobbing his head down.

As Cas’s sultry, scorching lips slid around the head of his cock, a tiny motion caught Dean’s eye off to the side.

The room had been silent and still apart from their uncontrolled sex sounds, and so the small movement pulled Dean’s focus.

The jar of what they assumed to be Sammael’s grace was moving. It shuddered, just the tiniest amount, towards the edge of Sam’s nightstand in minute, rhythmic thumps.

Like something tiny inside was throwing itself against the walls in desperation.

As Cas swallowed Dean down deep, ripping a gasp from his lungs, the jar tumbled to the floor.

“Fuck,  _ Cas…. _ ” Dean cried out as the jar smashed.

 

***

 

Sam was still staring at the amulet when he heard the front door to the building open. He reached automatically for his gun, but then he heard a voice.

“Agent Phillips?”

Heavy footsteps moved down the hallway overhead.  _ Shit _ , Sam thought. He wasn’t dressed in his FBI getup, nor had he thought to bring his badge with him on a covert body-disposal trip.

Easing the safety off his gun, Sam kept the amulet in hand as he moved stealthily back up the stairs toward the main level. Looking through the gap in the door, he saw a hefty, bald man with a huge beard standing in the hallway, looking down at the tentacled body-pile with a look of abject horror.

“A-Agent Phillips? I saw you come in, I just wanted to h-help….” his voice was shaking this time.

Gun and amulet still in hand, Sam stepped into the hallway. “Sheriff Dereleth?”

“Agent Phillips! Call me August, please,” the man stepped very carefully over a tentacle, moving toward Sam with a hand outstretched.

To greet the Sheriff, Sam juggled the amulet over to his other hand, settling it into his palm with his gun. As he grasped August’s hand back in turn, he noticed the Sheriff’s eyes widen.

“Where did you get that?” August asked, fearful.

Sam considered for a second, before firing back with questions of his own. “Do you want to tell me what it is? Perhaps you should also cover why you aren’t dead,” he added, his fingers rearranging firmly around his gun.

August raised his hands slowly, gesturing his cooperation to Sam. “Those are valid questions, Agent, and I’ll happily answer them. But I’m one of the good guys here, so maybe we could do it without the gun.”

After considering the hulking Sheriff for a moment more, Sam lowered his gun. “Sam. My name is Sam.”

August nodded. “You aren’t with the FBI,” he said, nodding quietly. “I had a hunch. But then, if you had been, you probably wouldn’t have believed any of this.” He gestured to the purple remnants of Keziah and Flagg on the floor.

“True,” Sam noted dryly. “Right now, I’m trying to figure out what your part in all this is,” he admitted, tucking his gun slowly into his waistband, his eyes still on the Sheriff warily.

“My part…” August sighed. “My family had been involved with the Malkira for generations. They really were philanthropic, once, though I think it was always a cover for something else. Then Keziah took over and—” he gestured around the hallway. “Everything changed.”

Considering the monsters on the floor, Sam sighed and shelved any idea of subtlety. “So tell me the truth. Sammael?”

August’s gaze dropped and he sighed. “Yes. The Malkira Foundation had always held Sammael as a kind of...patron saint, if you will. Dating back hundreds of years. It wasn’t a huge thing, there were some prayers and thanks that we’d give him throughout the year, that was all. It wasn’t—” August’s eyes dipped back up to Sam as they stood facing each other down in the hallway. “It wasn’t blasphemous, then. You have to believe me.”

Sam regarded the huge, quaking Sheriff, and found that he did. “Go on.”

“Keziah moved in from out of town. She rose quickly up the ranks—everything just always seemed to go in her favor. It was like she had…” August shrugged helplessly. “Assistance, somehow. From somewhere. Being the Sheriff has certain perks, I guess; She wanted me on her side.  When she took over from the retiring leader, things began to change. She trusted me though.”

Sam nodded slowly. “She told you the truth?”

August still regarded Sam cautiously, as if weighing up the chances of Sam believing his words. 

“Go ahead,” Sam coaxed. “Whatever it is, I’ve heard worse. I promise you that.”

“Sammael was real, I think. Once. But what they are all worshipping now—that’s not him. When the pattern emerged in the deaths, I wanted out. But I didn’t want to be next. I planned to leave town, but you showed up, and….” August flapped a hand at the bodies again, shrugging. 

“What are they worshipping now?” Sam asked firmly. “And what is this?” he lifted the amulet again, waving it at August. “I need answers.”

“His name is Nyarlathotep,” August intoned flatly. “And he is an abomination.”

Sam blinked; August continued.

“He is an Eldritch being. The Crawling Chaos, they call him, though around here he was known as The Yellow Man. He, uh,” August moistened his lips and blinked a few times, as if pushing back terrible memories. “He revels in chaos. In madness. A lot of Eldritch gods just want the world to end, but Nyarlathotep… he walks here, among us. He likes to play. He toys with us. Shapeshifts, possesses people. He loves to manipulate people into destroying their closest relationships and drive people to insanity.”

_ An Eldritch God. _ The text on the back of the amulet came immediately to Sam’s mind—he  _ had _ seen it before; in the letters of H.P. Lovecraft, when he, Dean and Cas had been searching for the door to Purgatory.

“And this being—Nyarlathotep—he’s here?” Sam questioned. 

“I tracked one of his vessels,” August shuffled a heavy boot across the floor, nudging at the grotesque tentacle that had been Randall Flagg’s right arm, “to the warehouse behind the hardware store last night. I saw him go in after Agent Howard and the other man, but the Flagg that came out was human.”

Sam frowned, but August finished for him before he could speak.

“I think Nyarlathotep has hopped vessels. I saw you leave your motel this morning, so I came to warn you.”

Things were slowly adding up for Sam, but the connections weren’t coming fast enough. August’s attention had turned back to Sam’s hand, where the chunky gold amulet was clasped.

“You found the Elder Amulet,” he nodded, slightly eager. “It’s the only thing that can control him. Keziah had it, inherited from her forefathers, but she hid it from us. From anyone who questioned her…” Augusts voice was low. “Though I guess I’m the only one left, now. Anyone else who questioned is already dead.”

Sam looked at his palm, turning the amulet over. “This can control Nyarlathotep? How?”

“You command him,” August offered. “I don’t know the specifics. But you bind him and command him in his own language.”

“R’Lyehian,” Sam recalled distantly from their Purgatory hunt. “Do you know it?”

“No,” August admitted regretfully. “But Keziah had books in her office here.” 

Sam was still staring at the amulet, recalling his morning. Dean had been asleep when he’d woken up, and even Cas had seemed out of it; not quite asleep, perhaps, but curled next to Dean with his eyes closed. He’d looked worn, and hadn’t shifted when Sam was getting ready to leave. He’d thought the sight was so strange, but oddly adorable, seeing the two of them sleeping next to each other, that he’d even left his brother a teasing note about it. 

Suddenly, it didn’t seem so innocent.

“August,” Sam looked up, his hazel eyes wide. “I’ll admit, I was suspicious of you. I didn’t trust you, with good reason. But I really need your help—I think my brother is in danger.”

 

***

 

Cas shrieked inelegantly as the glass jar finally tipped, plummeting to the floor from Sam’s nightstand. The thinly-carpeted concrete did the container no favors, and suddenly he was surrounded in a twinkling shower of glass pieces.

On the bed, he heard a commotion. He didn’t look at Dean; the image of Not-Cas’s body leaning over him still burned into his mind. Instead, he gathered himself up, flying forward and diving at the imposter.

Cas could feel the magic lessening; he was growing bigger, his limbs unfurling into their original shapes. He concentrated on remaining unseen, little more than a white wisp of smoke. The last thing he needed right now was to let his true form shimmer into view and burn Dean’s eyes out. 

There was scrambling on the bed. Dean reacting in confusion. Tuning it out, Cas pummelled his way back into his vessel.

 

***

 

Dean had endured some awkward hookups in his time, but this one took the cake.

Everything had been going spectacularly. Cas on top of him, passionate, eager, hotter than even his wildest fantasies over the past few years. Alright, there had been that nagging thought at the back of his mind that something wasn’t quite right, but everything had felt so good...Cas had felt so good.

Now, Cas pulled back from him. Still kneeling between Dean’s open thighs, his lips spit-slick and red from stretching around Dean’s cock, Cas looked furious. 

Dean scrambled back, his dick bobbing awkwardly as it was suddenly abandoned. He watched as Cas’s body writhed, his eyes suddenly black, empty voids.

“Cas?!”  _ What the hell… I should have known this was too good to be true. _

Cas jerked, his neck snapping at odd angles, his arms flailing, tumbling off the bed with a rabid snarl. His mouth opened a little too wide, and the voice that thundered out was far from human. 

“ _ Ah'legeth! Y' ymg' ephaiah'mgehye! _ ” Cas roared. 

Cas lurched and twisted, shuddering across the floor like a person having a grand mal seizure. 

“Cas!” Dean was off the bed now, down on his knees next to the jolting form of his best friend and recently-turned lover. “What’s happening?”

With a wrenching movement and a sickening snapping sound that had to have been Cas’s neck, his body went still. A second passed, and then something unseen blasted out of Cas at high speed, knocking Dean back on the floor. 

Cas slumped on his side, immobile.

“Cas?” Dean scrambled back across to Cas’s mostly naked form, reaching for his face. Grasping at his jaw, he shook him slightly. “Cas?!”

With a few blinks, blue eyes looked back up at Dean. Cas’s smile was one of immense relief, but he didn’t get to say anything before his attention was drawn up over Dean’s shoulder.

Dean sensed something behind him, and a gnawing feeling of overwhelming fear tore up through his stomach to his chest.

Turning, he took in the creature that stood next to the bed, looking down at them both.

It was very tall. Glowing with a sharp, yellow light, it hovered above the floor. Entirely hairless, the creature had pitch-black skin and glossy, empty black eyes. It’s skin writhed, like there was a ball of snakes beneath the surface. A mouth—no, a maw—that was entirely too big for its face opened, and a hollow laugh tumbled out from the toothless abyss. 

“Puppets,” it hissed. “Puppets with cut strings.”

Dean felt his body go limp, and he tumbled to the floor next to Cas, like his muscles couldn’t hold him up any longer. He emitted a strangled sound, only vaguely aware of Cas struggling to sit up next to him. 

“Spoiling my games!” the creature roared, and his body throbbed, the disconcerting pulsing beneath the skin increasing.

Dean heard a car pulling up outside, heard Cas stumbling to his feet. His head was fuzzy, unable to look away from the creature, but his eyes searched for something—anything—that might help them.  

“You made a huge mistake,” Cas roared back in turn, his eyes beginning to glow blue-white. “You won’t  _ ever _ touch him again—” 

The creature laughed, and simply looked at Cas. 

The light of Cas’s grace began to pop and fizzle as the entity curved its maw into a smile, the power that would usually blast out from Cas pushed down without a word or touch. After a second, Cas’s eyes were back to blue and he was shaking. “What are you?” he managed to rumble, staggering down to one knee.

“Ny-ar-la-tho-tep…” the creature hissed it out, syllable by syllable, almost gleeful. “Castiel…” he looked at Cas, then turned his eyes to Dean. “and Dean. I have seen you—” he laughed grotesquely. “Seen your mind, your feelings, angel. I saw it  _ all. _ ”

Dean had managed to ease his fingers around the biggest chunk of the broken glass jar. Feeling like his arms were made of lead, he swung clumsily at the entity. 

He managed to slash at the being’s thigh. Nothing happened, like the glass simply passed through a void, but it was enough to distract it for just a brief moment so that Cas could get back to his feet. 

What they’d mostly managed to achieve, it seemed, was to make Nyarlathotep angry.

He seemed to swell in size, towering darkly over them as he hissed in a language Dean couldn’t comprehend. The undulating sinews under his skin seemed to thrash, and then—

Dean felt disconnected from everything around him, his gaze caught on the macabre, bizarre sight in front of him. This creature, this being, was so far beyond his comprehension that it seemed his mind simply ceased to function.

Twisting tendrils and tentacles erupted from it, and Dean’s eyes followed them dumbly, unable to look away.

The blackness of the creature was somehow enchanting. Dean looked into the abyss; the abyss looked back.

Somewhere in the distance, a deep voice was shouting.

“Dean! Dean, you can’t look—don’t look, it’ll drive you mad, Dean… Dean!”


	9. The Slaying of the Monster

 

**~The Slaying of the Monster~**

 

 

Sam snapped the Continental into park with a screech, stopping right outside their motel room with the rear of the car fish-tailed carelessly out into the road. He raced to the back door, grabbing the book that he’d hurriedly thrown on the back seat.

The Sheriff jumped out of the passenger seat, looking sweaty and nervous, but offering his assistance nonetheless. He moved around the hood of the car, pulling his trusty Glock 19 from his holster out of habit. He moved next to Sam, who was thumping on the motel room door.

“Dean! Cas!”

There was no answer, but there was definitely a commotion happening inside. They could hear a man shouting, an odd screech of high-pitched white noise, and some constant, toneless screaming that Sam feared belonged to Dean.

“Step aside,” the Sheriff indicated, taking aim at the room lock. They didn’t have time to wait for his usual bread-and-butter, warrants and reasonable suspicion, he knew. This wasn’t his usual case.

With a sharp blast, the crappy motel lock was obliterated. Sam pushed inside forcefully, book open in one hand and gold amulet raised in the other.

August stepped in behind him, and gasped.

The scene inside was incomprehensible.

Dean knelt on the floor, slumped sideways against one of the beds. He gazed up at a patch of darkness in the air that Sam knew better than to try and focus on. Dean’s jaw hung loose, a low, toneless scream the only indication of life in his immobile body.

Cas knelt next to him, shaking. Sam thought he saw tears glisten on the angel’s cheeks, but that was really none of his business.

Instead, he focused on the book in hand, holding the amulet up like a shield.

“ _Y' ymg' ulnah, Nyarlathotep!_ ” Sam intoned forcefully, reciting from the page. His words were clumsy and unpracticed—and he honestly had very little idea what he was saying—but they seemed to do something.

The dark, twisting form in the air, part man and part nightmare octopus, from what Sam could make out without directly looking, froze. It held in the air for a split second, before slowly turning to regard Sam, trembling with power and rage.

Moistening his lips, Sam’s arm shook in front of him as he crept forward, moving the amulet closer to the creature. He knew he should try and touch the being with it, but he was afraid.

He focused on reciting the next words he and August had hastily translated. “ _Nyalarthotep! Epgoka fahf shuggog!_ ”

A high pitched scream reverberated around the room from the creature as he fought against Sam’s command that he leave this world.

Sam stood steady, but he could feel his arm and his will weakening. This creature was far too strong to be banished by a mere mortal. Particularly one who could barely pronounce the incantation.

Shaking, Sam held his ground for a moment more, but felt his energy ebbing as Nyarlathotep pushed back against him.

Suddenly a strong, tanned hand gripped around the amulet, ripping it from Sam.

“Say it again!” Cas growled, diving at the creature with the amulet outstretched.

 _“Epgoka fahf shuggog!”_ Sam shouted, watching as Cas dashed forward.

Cas plunged his fist, amulet and all, deep into the creature. He felt the amulet grow hot as the beast’s tentacles began to wrap around him, pulling him from the floor.

Instinctually, he lifted his grace, burning it out of him in a bright white explosion. He channeled it down through his fist, into the amulet.

 

 

Nyarlathotep screamed.

Sam repeated the command, over and over, and Cas channeled everything he had into banishing the Eldritch being. It was clear to him now, what this was; when he heard the language Sam used, the ancient tongue of R’lyeh, the sunken city of Eldritch abominations. This was more God than creature, and it would take more than a simple command to banish him.

So Cas dug deep. His grace had been dwindling since he’d been cut off from Heaven, and he could only pray to a God who he knew didn’t care, that what he had would be enough.

Forcefully, he shoved the last whispers of his grace deep inside the creature.

 

***

 

Dean came around slowly. He felt like his brain had been scrambled. Sloppily, with too much salt and a runny splash of hot-sauce across the top.

The silence in the motel room seemed very loud.

Sam stood leaning against the wall near the door, taking deep breaths. Just inside the doorway, to Dean’s confusion, stood Sheriff Dereleth. He’d assumed the man was dead.

On the floor a few feet away, sprawled face down, was Cas. His white dress shirt clung feebly to his frame by the arms alone, his tie so askew it ran across his shoulder.

Self-consciously pulling up his underwear, which was clinging uncomfortably to his thighs, Dean raised his eyes to Sam as he began to shuffle toward Cas.

“Sammy?” he questioned hoarsely.

“I’m okay, Dean,” he panted, sagging further against the wall. “One question, though—”

Dean knew it was coming, but he had no time to brace himself.

“Why the fuck are you both half-naked?”


	10. New England Fallen

 

**~New England Fallen~**

 

 

By silent consensus, Sam was the one to take the Continental while they wrapped up in town and headed back to the Bunker.

Cas had barely been awake for more than a few minutes at a time all day, so once Dean and Sam had packed their bags and prepped to leave, they lay him out on the back seat of the Impala. He stayed there while they made their final two stops in Dunwich.

The first was to Sheriff Dereleth’s office.

The “Family Business, Saving People” talk didn’t always go down so well with law enforcement, but the Sheriff had seen far too much to question anything they said. If anything, he just seemed glad that they didn’t think _he_ was nuts.

He thanked them and promised all their tracks would be covered, before waving them more-than-happily goodbye.

They didn’t mention what their final stop would be, but felt confident that August would cover that up for them too.

The fog that hung in the town felt a little less oppressive, Dean noted, as he sprinkled gasoline around the perimeter of the Malkira Foundation headquarters. The town, he predicted, would undergo a likely-miraculous economic and cultural recovery after the sad loss of their “benefactors”.

The flames that tore down the high, gray building (with tentacled bodies still inside) drew a small crowd, so Dean and Sam used the commotion to slip out of town.

Sam went first, leading the long drive back to Kansas, and Dean followed up with Cas on the back seat, his trench coat spread over him like a blanket.

Every mile or so, Dean’s eyes flicked to the back seat with concern, but he couldn’t bring himself to wake him.

They were still, technically, in New England when Cas finally sat up, leaning listlessly against the window.

“Hello, Dean,” he croaked.

“Cas,” Dean’s voice was warm and thrummed with relief. “Man, it’s good to see you sitting up,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful,” Cas responded flatly. “Do you have any coffee?”

Dean blinked, but didn’t question it. “There’s a gas station ahead, I’ll pull in.”

That seemed to be it for conversation, as Cas turned to look out of the window until they arrived. Once Dean pulled up in a space near the front of the small store, he turned to ask Cas once more if he was okay—but he was already opening the door, stepping out of the car and shuffling into the gas station to obtain coffee.

Dean watched him go, troubled. The way he held himself was different, reminding Dean uncomfortably of a time years before when he’d watched Cas in a gas station not so very different to this one. The fact Cas needed, or at least wanted, to drink something didn’t help the uneasy feeling in his chest.

When Cas came back out of the door with two sandwiches in hand too, one for himself and one for Dean, the unease grew.

Not wanting to put words to it, they drove the rest of the way to Kansas in silence.

 _He saved my life,_ Dean thought, over and over. _But what did he give up to do it?”_

 

***

 

Jody only stayed for an hour after they all returned, filling them in on the quiet time she’d spent with Jack before ducking out. The heavy silence between Dean and Castiel was oppressive, even to her.

Jack was just happy to have them home, embracing them all in turn. He looked at Castiel for a few moments, his brow creasing, but didn’t say anything.

The longer Dean stayed silent, the grumpier Castiel became.

Eventually, Dean gave up unpacking the books that they’d taken from Sammael’s chapel—thinking to add them to the bunker’s extensive occult library—and stalked off to his bedroom, claiming that he had a headache from the long drive and the Eldritch brain intrusion.

For a few minutes after he left, Castiel sat in silence at the library table, half-unpacked duffles spread out before him. He stared down at his hands on the table, until he became aware of Jack and Sam lowering themselves into seats, one each side of him.

“Castiel,” Jack asked calmly, “are you okay?”

Castiel shrugged but then nodded. “Yes, I’m fine, really. I’m human, near enough, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’m not upset about that.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “You used all of your grace to banish Nyarlathotep? Every drop?”

“Yes. It was barely enough.”

Castiel was weary, feeling bruised to his core and still affected by the events of the past couple of days, but he found that he genuinely felt no conflict over his human state. To save Dean, to save any of them, he’d do it over gain in a heartbeat. Mostly, he was upset about Dean’s reaction to him. Clearly, Dean harbored some feeling for him that they had never been brave enough to explore; why shut him out now?

Sam tucked his hair behind his ear, smiling sympathetically at Castiel. “I’m sorry, buddy. I guess that explains why Dean is so pissed.”

Castiel frowned up at Sam, squinting. “Why?”

Jack looked over to Sam too, seemingly curious as to what explanation he would give.

“I’m going to guess that Dean feels responsible,” Sam ventured. “That would be his usual reaction, after all. He probably feels like it’s his fault that you’re human.”

“Oh,” Castiel responded, nodding. “Well, that makes sense. I don’t think that’s the whole reason Dean is avoiding me, though.”

Sam spread his fingers out on the top of the library table, studying them for a minute. He sighed then, and closed his eyes before asking, “Alright. You’re my friend, so I’m going there. What happened in that motel room, Cas?”

“Nyarlathotep took possession of my vessel. The jar you took from the Malkira house, Sam,” Castiel nodded toward him, “was actually me. I was imprisoned.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded along. “I got that when Dean and I went to meet with the Sheriff before we left. What happened between you and Dean, though?” He winced, as if not even sure he wanted to know, but asking anyway.

“Well, it wasn’t me, exactly,” Castiel began, very aware of Jack’s curious gaze resting on him. “The creature took my vessel and—to torture us both, I suppose—he used it to seduce Dean. I was in the jar on your nightstand at the time so I, uh, I saw everything,” Castiel mumbled, uncharacteristically.

“Oh,” Sam responded feebly. After a minute of awkward silence, Sam spoke up again, somewhat uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Cas. That must have been...very awkward, for you,” he managed.

“Not as awkward as it was for Dean, as it turns out,” Castiel muttered quietly, staring once more at his hands. “Nyarlathotep said that he saw my thoughts, my desires. He used them to manipulate Dean...” he admitted, abnormally shy, “and now Dean is barely speaking to me.”

“Of course,” Jack responded sagely, reaching to pat Castiel’s arm consolingly. “Poor Dean. He has no idea that you’re in love with him—you didn’t tell him that yourself, it was all the Eldritch creature’s doing, so now he feels like he took advantage of you, and probably feels violated by what the creature did to him, as it turned out it was never you.”

Sam and Castiel both blinked at Jack in unison.

“Did I say something wrong?” Jack asked, frowning as he tilted his head, looking eerily like Castiel for a moment.

“No—” Castiel beamed across at Jack “You said the right thing. I hadn’t considered it from Dean’s side, like that. I thought he was just…” shrugging.

Jack smiled knowingly. “You thought Dean knew your feelings and was rejecting you.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Well, Cas, I have to say… if the creature didn’t force Dean, then you sort of have to assume that Dean did it because he wanted to.”

Sam stood up from the table, reaching to squeeze Castiel’s shoulder before he departed.

“I’m going to head to bed myself because honestly, I don’t want anything to do with this. But I think you should talk to him, Cas,” Sam smiled. “I’m pretty certain you’re both on the same page. You just haven’t checked out the same book.”

Squinting at the idiom, Castiel took a second to smile. But when he did, he pushed his chair back and stood too. “Right. I think I understand. Thank you, Sam—” he turned, reaching to briefly embrace the Nephilim, “and Jack. I appreciate your encouragement. I’ll talk to Dean, when he’ll let me.”

 

***

 

Dean didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning. He knew they still had unpacking to do. He should help Sam catalog the new books they’d taken from Dunwich, but the truth was, he’d rather hide in his room.

He was mortified. He’d had sex with Cas. Well, perhaps not completely, all-the-way, full-penetration had-sex-with-Cas, but he might as well have done. He’d certainly been down for it.

The fact that it hadn’t been Cas didn’t bother him too much on his own side. Nyarlathotep had almost done him a favor, making clear the feelings that Dean had never been brave enough to actually tell Cas about. He should probably feel horrendously violated by the Eldritch beast, but he didn’t. The whole time, he’d thought he was having sex with Cas. That was what mattered most. That, and the fact that the real Cas had been right there, watching the whole thing.

He’d never been so humiliated in his life.

On top of that, he had to deal with the deep, uncomfortable sensation that he’d somehow taken advantage of Cas, engaging in such things with his vessel when Cas himself hadn’t even been there to give any kind of permission.

He felt dirty and embarrassed.

On top of that, Cas was human. Cas had given up his grace to save _him,_ the thoughtless, base human who desired very inappropriate things with him.

Cas hadn’t addressed it, and neither had he, and that was making it worse.

Perhaps Cas could accept that it was just Dean being Dean, getting his jollies wherever he could find them, nothing more. Perhaps Cas didn’t need to know that it was so much more for Dean. That he’d wanted it. Wanted a whole slew of other things, too.

Maybe that would make Cas more comfortable.

Dean was on approximately his thirtieth stop on the ever-circling thought train when a knock came at his door.

“Dean,” Cas called from outside. “Can I come in?”

Dean’s heart froze as he sat up on the bed, pulling his pajama-clad knees to his chest. “Sure, buddy.”

Cas entered slowly, carefully closing the door behind him. Instead of occupying his usual desk chair, he moved closer to Dean and lowered himself to the mattress, perching next to Dean’s feet. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly, his deep blue eyes studying Dean carefully.

“How am I feeling?” Dean chuckled without any humor. “I should be asking you that. You’re the one without any grace.”

Cas smiled just a little, one corner of his lip quirking and making his eyes wrinkle. “I’ll be fine, Dean. I am not afraid to be human this time. It was worth it, and I don’t regret it.” he answered firmly.

He said it with such conviction that Dean found himself almost believing him. “Right. Well, good. And, uh, thanks, Cas. For doing that. For saving us.”

“You,” Cas corrected. “Saving you.”

Dean’s apple-green eyes rose to meet Cas’s blue for a moment then, and their gazes locked together. They stared an entire novel while they worked out where to begin.

Slowly, Dean exhaled. “Cas, look—I’m really sorry, for what you saw, I didn’t mean to—”

“First,” Cas interrupted, raising one finger. “Before you start apologizing, I’d like to say something.”

Dean caught himself, watching Cas warily, but he nodded. Whatever Cas needed.

“I just want you to know, Dean, that I was angry because that creature took advantage of you. And if you need time to work through that, I’ll do whatever I can to make that easier. But the fact remains that I wasn’t _just_ angry—I was also intensely jealous, Dean.”

Dean blinked.

“Nyarlathotep took steps with you that I have never been bold enough to. He did things that I’ve never had the courage to do. I think if it had gone on much longer, he may have even said words I’ve never been brave enough to say.”

Cas’s eyes dropped self-consciously to his own lap, where his hands sat twisting together.

Dean breathed unevenly into the silence. Gathering his thoughts. Eventually, after a few long moments, he forced out what he considered to be the most important thing to clarify. “You wanted to have sex with me.” It was a statement, not a question, but Cas still nodded.

“Yes, Dean.”

“You—” Dean was at a loss.

“I love you, Dean,” Cas supplied nervously. “I have for a very long time. I’m so sorry that Nyarlathotep took advantage of that to hurt you.”

Dean shook his head. “No, I think he did it to hurt _you_ ,” Dean moved across to reach for Cas’s frantically bunched hands. “Because it doesn’t hurt me that you’re in love with me, Cas.”

 

 

Cas’s face raised, hopeful.

“I’m in love with you too,” Dean confirmed, smiling. “I had sex with you—or what I thought was you—because I wanted to. Yeah, it was kinda sudden and strange, I had no idea you wanted me back, so something seemed off...but I barely hesitated. I want that, and more, with you.”

They sat and stared at each other for a moment more, a very human flush creeping up Cas’s neck that mirrored Dean’s.

“Cas,” Dean ventured again, his voice shaking. “I feel terrible. The fact that you love me doesn’t—” he stumbled, tightening his lips for a moment before he continued. “I feel like I took advantage of you. I thought you did, but you didn’t consent to what happened in that motel room, and you wanting it now doesn’t erase that.”

“I understand, Dean,” Cas nodded. “But I think you were taken advantage of just as much as I. I don’t have the same connection to my body that you do, Dean. I’m fine—” Cas ducked his head, catching Dean’s eyes again, “I’m angry at Nyarlathotep for that, not you. You did check for my consent Dean, I heard you. I don’t feel violated by you. Not at all.” His smile, though still toothy and wide, was nothing like the dark grins that the creature had given Dean.

 _How could I ever have thought that was him?_ Dean mourned briefly. His upset passed as Cas—the real Cas, he reminded himself—leaned closer.

“I would very much like to kiss you now, Dean,” Cas smiled shyly.

Dean laughed a little at the absurdity of it. “Well, you’ve already had my dick in your mouth. A kiss seems harmless.”

Cas’s flush was deep crimson, and for a moment Dean almost regretted joking; maybe that had been a bad idea.

But Cas pulled him in, slowly melding their lips together, and grinned against his mouth. “You’ll have to remind me how it tastes, later.”

  
  


**~~ The End ~~**

 


End file.
